Iran on Monday condemned killings in the Syrian town of Houla, blaming them on "terrorist actions" rather than its Damascus ally and calling for the perpetrators to be punished.

Iran "condemns the terrorist actions in the Houla area in Homs in Syria. The killing of a number of innocent people in the area has distressed the Islamic nations," the foreign ministry said in a statement relayed by official media.

Speaker Nabih Berri sought on Monday to appease the angry families of Lebanese pilgrims kidnapped in Syria, saying sources from the Syrian opposition and Turkish officials have confirmed that they are still alive.

In remarks to several Beirut dailies, Berri said reports and “rumors” that the 11 men, who were kidnapped in the northern province of Aleppo last week, were executed are baseless.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri proposed to pay a ransom to the abductors of the 11 Lebanese pilgrims in exchange for their release, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Monday.

The daily said that Hariri’s proposal facilitated negotiations with the kidnappers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday voiced "revulsion" over the bloodshed in Syria, while accusing Iran and its ally Hizbullah of being accomplices.

He was "revolted was by the incessant massacres conducted by Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces against ... civilians ... which continued over the weekend in the town of Houla," the premier's office said.

The U.N. Security Council on Sunday strongly condemned the Syrian government for using artillery in a massacre in which at least 108 people were killed and 300 others injured.

U.N. officials said the slaughter in Houla -- the subject of an emergency Security Council meeting -- claimed the lives of 49 children and 34 women.

The Syrian army on Sunday opened fire on three Lebanese nationals on the outskirts of the Rashaya town of Kfarqouq on the Lebanese-Syrian border, killing a man and wounding and arresting another, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported.

Citing reports, NNA said the three were trying to smuggle cigarette packets into Syria when they fell into an “advanced ambush” by the Syrian forces on the international border in an area northeast of Kfarqouq.

Syrian opposition head Burhan Ghalioun called on Sunday for a "battle of liberation" against the regime until the United Nations takes action under Chapter Seven which allows military intervention.

"I call on the Syrian people to lead a battle of liberation and dignity, relying on its own forces, on the rebels deployed across the country and the Free Syrian Army brigades and friends," he told a news conference in Istanbul.

More than 13,000 people have been killed in Syria since an anti-regime revolt broke out in March 2011, Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

"In total, 13,004 people were killed," Abdel Rahman said, adding that 9,183 of them were civilians.

The Syrian government is "not at all" responsible for the massacre of at least 92 people in the central town of Houla which has sparked an international outcry, foreign ministry spokesman Jihad al-Makdissi said on Sunday.

"We completely deny responsibility for this terrorist massacre against our people," Makdissi told a news conference.

Britain is to haul in Syria's top diplomat in London following the killing of 92 people -- a third of them children -- in the shelling of the town of Houla, the Foreign Office said Sunday.

Syria's charge d'affaires -- their ambassador has been withdrawn -- will meet with one of the top civil servants in the Foreign Office on Monday so Britain can stress its "condemnation" over the incident.