An Australian citizen fighting with Syrian rebels in their battle against President Bashar Assad's regime has been killed in the northwest of the country, a watchdog said on Wednesday.

"Abu al-Walid al-Australi was killed December 30 in a rebel assault on the Wadi Deif base," Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told Agence France Presse.

The families of the pilgrims kidnapped in Syria reportedly took the decision to suspend their actions against Turkish interests in Lebanon, said LBCI television on Wednesday.

It said that the decision was made after a delegation from the families met with Interior Minister Marwan Charbel, who requested that they suspend their escalatory measures.

A group of some 20 Syrian soldiers including a general defected from the army Tuesday and fled to Turkey, joining hundreds of other ex-troops from Syria's military, a Turkish diplomat told Agence France Presse.

"The soldiers who fled to Turkey include a general, three colonels and several other officers," the source said on condition of anonymity.

The international airport in Syria's second city of Aleppo has been temporarily closed due to repeated attacks by rebel fighters, an airport official said on Tuesday.

"There have been continued attempts by opposition militants to target civilian aircraft, which could cause a humanitarian disaster," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Deadly violence in Iraq dropped to near its lowest levels of 2012 in December, figures compiled by Agence France Presse showed on Tuesday, despite a wave of attacks a day earlier which killed 23 people.

Overall, 139 people were killed across the country last month, including 40 policemen and 15 soldiers, and 347 others were wounded, according to the data based on reports from security and medical officials.

Nearly 90 percent of those who have died in Syria's 21-month conflict were killed in 2012, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday.

More than 45,000 people have been killed since the conflict broke out in March 2011, but 39,362 of those perished during the past 12 months, the majority civilians, said the Britain-based watchdog.

Syria's government on Monday welcomed any initiative for talks to end bloodshed in the country, after U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said he had a peace plan acceptable to world powers.

The regime's stand, expressed by Prime Minister Wael al-Halaqi, came amid a flurry of diplomacy led by Brahimi to find ways to end the 21-month conflict.

Thirty tortured and disfigured bodies have been found in the northern Damascus neighborhood of Barzeh, the scene of regular clashes between regime troops and rebels, a watchdog said on Monday.

"Thirty bodies were found in the Barzeh district. They bore signs of torture and have so far not been identified," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on medics and activists on the ground in compiling its tolls.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Syrian refugees on Sunday that victory over the "tyrant" President Bashar Assad was at hand.

"I can see it clearly that the help of God is near," Erdogan said in televised remarks at Turkey's Akcakale refugee camp in the southeastern city of Sanliurfa.

A Russian warship carrying a marines unit has left its Black Sea port for Syria amid preparations for a possible evacuation of nationals living and working in the strife-torn country, news reports said Sunday.

The Novocherkassk landing ship is the third such craft dispatched since Friday to the Tartus port that Russia leases from its last Middle East ally, agencies cited an unnamed official in the general staff as saying.