Syria has asked Tunisia and Libya to close their embassies in Damascus in a tit-for-tat move after they both expelled Syria's envoys, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Saturday.

"Syrian authorities have asked Libya and Tunisia to close their embassies in Damascus in a reciprocal move," Jihad Makdisi told reporters.

Jihadists are moving from Iraq to Syria, as are weapons being sent to opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, Iraq's deputy interior minister told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

Assad has been carrying out a bloody crackdown on an uprising against his rule since March 2011, in which over 6,000 people have been killed.

Arab recognition of the opposition Syrian National Council is imminent, SNC member Ahmed Ramadan said in Qatar on Saturday, ahead of key talks in the Egyptian capital on the crisis.

"We have confirmations of an Arab recognition (of the SNC) that will soon take place, though not necessarily on Sunday," when the Arab League holds a ministerial meeting on Syria in Cairo, Ahmed Ramadan told AFP.

Syrian armor moved on the protest center of Homs and a general was gunned down in Damascus on Saturday as the bloodshed showed no signs of abating.

The Syrian National Council (SNC) said Arab recognition of the opposition umbrella group was imminent, ahead of key talks in the Egyptian capital on the crisis.

The Iraqi branch of al-Qaida carried out two recent bombings in Damascus and was likely behind suicide bombings Friday that killed at least 28 people in the Syrian city of Aleppo, McClatchy Newspapers reported.

Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the newspaper chain said the incidents appeared to verify Syrian President Bashar Assad's charges of Al-Qaida involvement in the uprising against his rule.

Two corpses allegedly belonging to Hizbullah members were reportedly entered to Lebanon from Syria on Friday, said al-Mustaqbal daily on Saturday.

The corpses were transferred to a hospital in the southern city of Tyre where forensics experts sought to inspect them, but they were later prevented by Hizbullah, whose members cordoned off the building before entering it, sources from the city told the daily.

The Arab League is likely to appoint a special envoy to Syria at a meeting this weekend, a Western diplomat in London said on Friday.

Also on Friday, the opposition Syrian National Council, an umbrella body grouping parties in revolt against Bashar al-Assad's regime, said it expects to be recognized within days by several Arab states.

A Turkish prosecutor has launched a probe after two Syrian refugees staying in a Turkish border camp were handed over to Syrian security forces, Anatolia news agency reported Friday.

Syrian dissident army colonel Huseyin Mustafa Harmus and Mustafa Kassum were taken out of a refugee camp in Altinozu, Hatay province, near the Syrian border and delivered to Syrian security forces "by force," said the prosecutor's office in southern Adana province, in a statement cited by Anatolia.

Seven Iranian engineers kidnapped near Syria's embattled city of Homs in late December have been released, the official IRNA news agency reported Friday, quoting an informed source at the ministry of energy.

The seven were working at a power plant in Jandar, near Homs, the city in central Syria that has become one of the flashpoints in the uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Arab League is likely to launch a "Friends of Syria" coalition and appoint a special envoy to the country at a meeting this weekend, a Western diplomat said Friday.

The diplomat also said that Iranians were "on the ground" giving technical help to Syrian intelligence services, and warned that President Bashar al-Assad's regime had "many levels of violence" yet to use.