Voter turnout in legislative elections in Syria stands at 51.26 percent, an official said on Tuesday, adding that 30 women had been elected to the 250-seat parliament.

Announcing the results of the May 7 vote that was boycotted by opposition groups, Khalaf al-Azzawi, head of the electoral commission, said of 10,118,519 Syrians eligible to vote, a little over half had cast ballots.

President Michel Suleiman stressed that Lebanon’s stability cannot be harmed as long as the Taif Accord still stands, noting that the clashes in the northern city of Tripoli have been caused by the mounting security tensions, reported al-Liwaa newspaper on Tuesday.

He told the newspaper: “The clashes in Tripoli have nothing to do with the Syrian crisis.”

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat rejected attempts at portraying Lebanon as a “Salafist hub” for arresting those who support the Syrian revolution.

He said in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa magazine: “Some security agencies in Lebanon are being prodded by Syria to harass the supporters of the Syrian revolution.”

The Syrian conflict has bred the emergence of obscure jihadists carrying out bloody attacks, either acting independently or manipulated by the regime seeking to tarnish the image of its opposition, analysts say.

"Al-Qaeda does not exist in Syria. But there are at present several splinter groups of jihadists who employ the same strategies," said Mathieu Guidere, a France-based analyst who specializes in the Arab and Muslim world.

France on Monday condemned the violence in the northern city of Tripoli and urged the Lebanese “not to import the Syrian conflict.”

“France calls on all the Lebanese to put their country’s interest above all else and to give priority to dialogue, national unity and civil peace, in order to avoid importing a conflict they have nothing to do with into their country,” French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.

EU foreign ministers slapped a 15th round of sanctions against President Bashar Assad due to the "appalling violence" in Syria and discussed further support for Kofi Annan's peace plan.

The new European Union sanctions, to take effect Tuesday, mean 129 people and 43 firms or utilities are now targeted by an assets freeze and travel ban for backing the regime's 14-month campaign of relentless repression.

At least 37 people were killed in violence across Syria on Monday, among them 23 soldiers who died in fierce clashes between regime forces and rebels in the central city of Rastan, activists said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said reports indicated that three troop carriers were destroyed in the clashes that began at dawn on the outskirts of the rebel-held city in Homs province, which U.N. observers had toured last month.

The General Security Department detained a Jordanian called Abdulmalek Mohammed Youssef Othman Abdulsalam, who is linked to al-Qaida, the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat reported on Monday.

Abdulsalam was extradited by the Iranian authorities to Syria in the past few months, and then he entered Lebanon and was arrested when he was on his way to the Rafik Hariri International Airport.

An official at the Iranian Energy Ministry revealed that his country will start providing Lebanon and Syria with electricity “soon,” Iran's state news agency IRNA reported.

“Supplying Lebanon with power was among the issues that Lebanon and Iran agreed on in the previous few months,” Abdolhamid Frazam Behboodi said.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati’s sources denied on Monday a report that Syria had pressured the PM to give up a decision by Lebanese authorities to steer the country clear of the uprising against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

In remarks to several radio stations, sources close to Miqati said: “The policy of distancing ourselves (from the uprising in Syria) is still on.”