At least 20 people including eight children were killed as Syrian army tanks blasted the northern village of Kahtaniyeh on Wednesday, a monitoring group said.

"At least 20 people, among them eight children and three women, were killed in shelling by regime forces of farmlands in Kahtaniyeh village, west of the city of Raqa," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

More than 45,000 people have been killed in Syria since the outbreak in March 2011 of an anti-regime revolt that became a bloody insurgency after a brutal crackdown on dissent, a watchdog said Wednesday.

"In all we have documented the deaths of 45,048 people," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Agence France Presse.

The UAE supports a "non-sectarian" change in power in war-hit Syria, the WAM official news agency quoted the Gulf state's foreign minister as saying after he met with a top Syrian opposition leader.

"The United Arab Emirates supports a non-sectarian future change of government in Syria," Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan said late Tuesday after he met with the opposition National Coalition's chief, Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib in Abu Dhabi.

Fresh clashes erupted in the Palestinian Yarmuk camp in southern Damascus during the night, a watchdog said on Wednesday, a week after major fighting there sent some 100,000 refugees fleeing for safety.

The latest violence came despite an agreement between rebels and pro-regime Palestinian fighters that they would withdraw from the camp, which houses some 150,000 people.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour stressed on Wednesday that Turkey is not behind the abduction of Lebanese pilgrims in Syria, a day after the families of the men held a sit-in near the Baabda Palace to demand President Michel Suleiman and the government to resolve the case.

"Turkey isn't responsible for the kidnapping of the men in Syria," Mansour said in comments to Voice of Lebanon radio (100.5).

The United Nations warned Tuesday that Syrians are "losing hope" as war worsens in their country, with prospects of a diplomatic end now at rock bottom, and international aid is cut.

Peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi's latest talks with Syria's President Bashar Assad produced no sign of a willingness to negotiate, diplomats said, and there are mounting warnings of a sectarian war taking over the uprising against Assad.

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday called for an "end to the bloodshed" in conflict-wracked Syria in his traditional Christmas message that touched on several other of the world's conflict zones and attacks on Christians.

"There is hope in the world... even at the most difficult times and in the most difficult situations," he said, praying for peace in Syria, whose people have been "deeply wounded and divided by a conflict which does not spare even the defenseless and reaps innocent victims."

The six Gulf states sharpened their tone against their Shiite neighbor Iran on Tuesday, demanding an immediate halt to its "interference" in their internal affairs while urging a rapid political transition in its ally Syria.

Concluding a two-day summit in Manama, the Gulf Cooperation Council members voiced support for Bahrain's Sunni minority regime while lashing out at Tehran, which they accuse of fueling a Shiite-led uprising in the host country last year.

Families of the 11 Lebanese pilgrims kidnapped in Syria briefly blocked on Tuesday the road to the presidential palace in Baabda to protest the ongoing abduction of their loves ones.

One of the relatives explained that the protest is a message to President Michel Suleiman to urge him to exert more efforts to resolve the case of the pilgrims.

Syrian insurgents ambushed and killed a military intelligence officer near Damascus while the army pounded several rebel bastions in and around the capital and insurgents seized a town near Turkey, a watchdog reported on Tuesday.

"Rebel fighters ambushed the military intelligence chief in Jaramana on Monday night, after which he was killed," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.