More than 2,000 Syrian soldiers have defected to Jordan since the conflict erupted last year in the neighboring country, the commander of Jordan's border guards said in remarks published on Monday.

"The number of refugees who have entered Jordan through unofficial border crossings until Wednesday has reached more than 74,000 Syrians... 2053 of them soldiers from various ranks," Brigadier General Hussein al-Ziyud told the semi-official al-Dustour newspaper.

Turkish Ambassador Inan Ozyildiz stressed that his country is exerting efforts to maintain Lebanon's stability and sovereignty, expressing hope that the developments in the region would reinforce this matter.

Ozyildiz said during a lunch banquet held by former Social Affairs Minister Nayla Moawad in Ehden on Sunday that Turkey is trying to promote pluralism in the region.

Speaker Nabih Berri voiced on Monday his support to the measures undertaken by the army in the northeastern Bekaa border town of Arsal.

“The army should be allowed to assume its tasks... It is carrying out its responsibilities to the fullest,” Berri said in comments published in An Nahar newspaper.

Embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad's only sister, Bushra, whose husband was killed in a July bombing, is now living in Dubai with her children, Syrian residents told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

Bushra's husband General Assef Shawkat, an army deputy chief of staff, was killed along with three other high-ranking officials in a July 18 bombing at the National Security headquarters in Damascus.

Syrian aircraft carried out strikes on rebel bastions across the country on Sunday, especially in the central province of Homs and Deir Ezzor in the east, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said apartment blocks in Albu Kamal were targeted as rebels and soldiers fought battles on the ground in several districts of the town on the Iraqi border.

Syria's vast territory is increasingly outside the control of the regular military, whose aerial superiority is the last strength keeping the Damascus regime afloat, a rebel chief told Agence France Presse.

"With or without outside help, the fall of the regime is a question of months, not years," said Colonel Ahmed Abdel Wahab, who claims that he commands a brigade of 850 men in the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi met Saturday to discuss the situation in Syria, expressing hope that an upcoming U.N. General Assembly summit will help improve the humanitarian situation in the country.

In a statement released after the meeting, the United Nations said the two men focused on how to address what they called "the appalling levels of violence in Syria."

Thousands of supporters of Hizbullah protested on Saturday in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil against a film mocking Islam.

"This film that insults the Prophet is not merely a trivial creation carried out by a group, but American politics intended to be disseminated to the Western world," Hizbullah MP Nawaf al-Moussawi told the crowd.

Syrian rebels announced that their command center has been transferred from neighboring Turkey to inside Syria, in a video posted on Saturday.

"The Free Syrian Army command has moved into liberated areas of Syria following arrangements made with battalions and brigades to secure these zones," FSA chief, Colonel Riyadh al-Asaad, said in the video.

Jordanian border guards clashed at dawn Saturday with armed men in a border area and arrested all of the gunmen, Information Minister Samih Maayatah said.

"Jordanian border guards arrested at dawn a group of gunmen in one of the border areas after an exchange of gunfire," he said in remarks carried by the state-run Petra news agency.