Russia said on Monday it would be "political suicide" for the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad if it used chemical weapons against the armed opposition.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview released by the English-language state television channel RT that Assad had given Moscow repeated assurances he had no plans to order such an attack.

More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in Syria since the conflict there erupted more than 21 months ago, a Palestine Liberation Organization official in charge of refugees said on Sunday.

"More than 700 Palestinians have died in Syria since the beginning of the conflict, including in Yarmuk" refugee camp in southern Damascus, the PLO's Zakaria al-Agha told officials of Palestinian refugees in Arab states.

Syria's information minister on Sunday played down Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa's assessment that the country's bloody 21-month conflict could not be resolved by military means.

"It is one opinion among 23 million opinions in Syria, which is a state led by institutions and leaders who will give the final opinion," said Omran al-Zohbi, referring to Syria's population.

More than 60 civilians were killed on Sunday in a strike by Syrian regime warplanes on people queuing outside a bakery in the rebel-held town of Halfaya in the central province of Hama, a watchdog said, as regime warplanes pounded the capital's suburbs and the northern province of Aleppo.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which had earlier reported "dozens" killed, said the death toll could rise as at least 50 people had also been critically wounded.

Syria insisted on Sunday its military played no role in last week's deadly clashes between pro- and anti-regime forces inside the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus.

Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi also called for all Palestinian refugee camps in Syria to be kept out of the country's 21-month conflict that a rights watchdog estimates has cost at least 44,000 lives.

The world's largest Muslim body on Sunday condemned threats made by Islamist rebels in Syria against two Christian towns, warning of fresh confessional strife in the war-torn country.

Such threats "are contrary to the precepts of Islam which calls for tolerance, brotherhood and peace," said the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation based in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

U.N.-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Syria on Sunday for talks on the country's crisis, Agence France Presse reported.

Brahimi entered Syria via a land border crossing with Lebanon after arriving earlier in the day at the Rafik Hariri International Airport from Cairo.

About 2,000 Iraqi protesters, demanding the ouster of Premier Nouri al-Maliki, blocked on Sunday a highway in western Iraq leading to Syria and Jordan, an AFP correspondent reported.

The protesters, including local officials, religious and tribal leaders, turned out in Ramadi, the capital of Sunni province of Anbar, to demonstrate against the arrest of nine guards of Finance Minister Rafa al-Essawi.

The families of the Lebanese pilgrims held in Syria staged on Sunday a sit-in in front of the Turkish Embassy in Lebanon to protest the failure to resolve the case of their loved ones.

They vowed in a statement to “take escalatory measures against Turkish interests in Lebanon at the beginning of the new year.”

Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel stressed the need to fortify the internal Lebanese scene against any political or security development in Syria, reported the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat on Sunday.

He stressed the need “to take in the dangerousness of the developments in Syria in order to avert having Lebanon pay the price of the changes in the neighboring country.”