Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Thursday that he shares Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel's viewpoint that Christians “are going through difficult and complicated circumstances in the region, especially in Syria.”

“We agreed with the Phalange Party to activate contacts between our two parties and between the institutions … in the framework of finding solutions to the region's problems,” Bogdanov said after meeting Gemayel, in his first meeting after arriving in Beirut on a 4-day official visit.

The White House said Thursday that Syria had likely used chemical weapons against rebel forces on a "small scale," but emphasized U.S. spy agencies were still not 100 percent sure of the assessment.

A senior U.S. administration official commented on the news, saying that "all options are on the table" if it is confirmed that Syria has used chemical weapons against opposition forces.

The number of terror attacks in Europe rose significantly last year, the continent's policing agency said Thursday, warning that conflicts in Syria and Mali provided potential breeding grounds for future militants.

In its latest "EU Terrorism and Trend Report", Europol said there had been 219 terror-related attacks in the 27-nation bloc last year in which 17 people died as a result.

Syria's regime has changed strategy and is battling to seize main highways rather than spread its forces thin, aiming to regain key points and freeze the flow of fighters and arms towards Damascus.

To help achieve this goal, the army is being backed by local militiamen operating in their own towns and villages and who have been trained in street warfare for several months in Iran and Russia, according to experts and sources close to Syria's security forces.

Britain and its allies are "well prepared" to deal with the situation if Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime decides to use chemical weapons, a British minister said Thursday in Amman.

"We are extremely conscious of the threat of chemical weapons in Syria. The United Kingdom with partners are looking very carefully at how any particular incident might be dealt with," Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East Alistair Burt told a news conference.

The departure of hundreds of young Europeans to fight in Syria poses "a serious threat" to Europe's security, the EU's anti-terror chief Gilles de Kerchove said Thursday.

EU citizens were heading "in the hundreds" to Syria which was drawing foreign fighters "in the thousands if we aggregate with those leaving from the Balkans and North Africa," he said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will meet United Arab Emirates leaders on Thursday to wrap up a major arms deal that both nations see as a way to thwart Iran's military power.

Hagel arrived in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday on the last leg of a six-nation tour of the Middle East in which he has sought to renew ties with American allies who share Washington's concerns over Iran's nuclear project and Syria's civil war.

The families of the nine Lebanese pilgrims held in Syria's Aazaz region held a sit-in on Thursday in front of the French Embassy in Beirut to pressure France to exert efforts to release the captives.

They said in a statement: “We will escalate our actions and stage sit-ins in front of the embassies of all countries that support the Syrian opposition.”

Syria's air force carried out air strikes on rebel enclaves near Damascus on Thursday, while clashes pitted rebels against troops in the north of the capital, a monitoring group said.

Warplanes also struck villages in the northwestern province of Idlib, rebel-controlled Raqa in the north, Hasake in the northeast and Daraa in the south, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

U.N. Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman has warned that the spillover of Syria's war continues to be felt in Lebanon as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N. Susan Rice slammed Hizbullah for undermining the country's dissociation policy.

“The spillover of the conflict in Syria continues to be felt in Lebanon,” Feltman told the U.N. Security Council during an open debate on the Middle East Wednesday.