Opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad voted on Sunday to elect 29 provincial council members to run rebel-held areas in the northern province of Aleppo, organizers and participants told Agence France Presse.

"For the first time, Aleppo will have a freely elected provincial council. We hope the whole of Syria will have a free election soon," candidate Yehia Naanaa from the bombed-out town of Hreitan told AFP.

An Iraqi soldier was killed and three people including a soldier were wounded inside north Iraq in fire exchanged between regime forces and rebels in Syria, the defense ministry spokesman in Baghdad said.

The casualties were caused by "fighting at the Yaarubiyeh border crossing inside Syria" on Saturday, Mohammed al-Askari told Agence France Presse by telephone.

Bahrain on Sunday criticized world inaction on Syria and Iranian "interference" in the internal affairs of Gulf states ahead of a visit to the Saudi capital by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

"The Syrian crisis has become more of a quasi-catastrophe through the unjustified killing of the Syrian people," Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled al-Khalifa said at the opening session of a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) meeting.

Syria's opposition chief Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib made a first visit to the largely rebel-held northern province of Aleppo on Sunday, an opposition source told Agence France Presse.

"Khatib entered the country for a few hours on Sunday morning for the first time" since becoming head of the Syrian National Coalition in November, the source said on condition of anonymity.

Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon said on Sunday that Israel is closely monitoring the battlefronts in Syria after press reports that rebels had seized Scud missiles from regime forces.

But Yaalon downplayed any threat to Israel from the Scuds -- long-range surface-to-surface missiles which Iraq's executed dictator Saddam Hussein used against the Jewish state in the 1991 Gulf War.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Sunday that Syrian President Bashar Assad was "delusional" for failing to see that the bloodshed in his country was at his own hands.

Hague said that he would this week announce more assistance to the Syrian opposition in the form of non-lethal equipment and refused to rule out the possibility of arming them in the future.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea acknowledged that differences within the March 14 camp exist over the parliamentary electoral law, but added they are being resolved.

He said: “We supported the Orthodox Gathering proposal at the electoral subcommittee for the sake of reaching an agreement over an electoral law.”

Hundreds of Syrian troops and rebels were killed in a week-long battle for a police academy in the northern province of Aleppo, with insurgents seizing control of most of the complex, a monitoring group said on Sunday.

"Rebels have seized most of a police academy in Khan al-Assal in Aleppo province ... after eight days of fighting that left 200 troops and rebels dead," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot voiced his country's support for the Lebanese government's policy of disassociation from regional developments, reported the daily An Nahar Sunday.

He told the daily that all Lebanese powers must respect the Baabda Declaration that was sponsored by President Michel Suleiman and which calls for sides to adhere to the disassociation policy.

Syrian President Bashar Assad said he is ready to negotiate with the country's opposition but refuses to consider stepping down, in a rare interview with a UK newspaper.

Assad offered to hold talks with rebels in a bid to end the crisis on the condition they lay down their arms, but made the distinction between the "political entities" he would talk with and "armed terrorists".