The Military Tribunal issued on Monday arrest warrants against two Syrian officials over their links to the case of former Minister Michel Samaha, reported the National News Agecny.

First Military Investigation Judge Riyad Abu Ghida issued the warrant against Syrian security chief Ali Mamlouk and a colonel identified only by his first name Adnan.

Israel will regret its latest "aggression against Syria", Iran's security chief Saeed Jalili told reporters during a visit to Damascus on Monday.

"Just like it regretted all its wars... the Zionist entity will regret its aggression against Syria," Jalili, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said a day after Israel implicitly confirmed it staged an air strike near Damascus last week.

Syrian "extremists" have released two Russians and an Italian citizen kidnapped on December 12 in the west of Syria, as part of an exchange for militants, the Russian foreign ministry said Monday.

The two Russians are already at the Russian embassy in Damascus while the Italian will be handed over to Italy's representatives through the Syrian foreign ministry, it said in a statement, without giving further details on the nature of the exchange.

Syrian deputy foreign minister Faisal Muqdad begins a four-day visit to China on Monday, Beijing's foreign ministry said, after a handful of visits by high-level envoys in recent months.

Syria's opposition offered this week to hold talks with the Damascus government over the country's bloody conflict, now almost two years long.

Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Najib Miqati expressed on Monday solidarity with the army over the clashes in the eastern town of Arsal near the border with Syria, saying that it has the full political cover.

“What happened in Arsal is a crime against the whole nation,” Berri said in comments published in As Safir newspaper.

Israel's air strike on Syria last week may have damaged the country's main research center on biological and chemical weapons, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Wednesday's air strike targeted surface-to-air missiles and an adjacent military complex believed to house chemical agents, a U.S. official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Finally they've arrived -- nearly 2,000 kerosene heaters for thousands of displaced Syrians facing a bitingly cold winter in camps in rebel-controlled areas in the northwest of the country.

Trucks loaded with precious gas stoves came from Iraq via Turkey, to be distributed in four camps along the Turkish border by a Western NGO whose name its employees refrain from using for "political and security" reasons.

At least 13 civilians were killed Sunday in a missile attack by the Syrian army on a rebel-held neighborhood in the embattled northern city of Aleppo, a monitoring group said.

"We have documented the names of nine people, while we can confirm at least another four were also killed. All were civilians," Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Syria's main opposition group said Russia must now put pressure on President Bashar Assad to end the spiraling conflict, a Syrian National Coalition (SNC) spokesman told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

"The ball is now in Russia's court. If Russia is genuinely thinking about the future of its interests in the region, we think it should side with the Syrian people's legitimate grievances, and not with those who are killing the Syrian people," spokesman Walid al-Bunni told AFP by telephone.

President Bashar Assad's key ally Moscow has not stopped supporting the Syrian regime, a state daily said on Sunday, hours after Russia's top diplomat met the Syrian opposition leader.

"Bets that Russia would change its mind and modify its stance clash with its policy, which is commanded by its interests and strategic considerations," the official daily Ath Thawra wrote in an editorial.