Visiting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Jake Walles, held talks on Wednesday with Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji, announced the U.S. Embassy in a statement.

The U.S. official had held talks on Tuesday with a number of Lebanese officials to discuss the political, security, and economic situation in Lebanon, as well as the current situation in Syria, it added.

At least 19 people were killed in violence-hit Syria on Wednesday, activists said, as tens of thousands of supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad rallied in Damascus, in a show of support for the embattled leader.

The demonstrators, waving Syrian flags and brandishing pictures of Assad, swarmed to Omayyad Square, chanting, "The people want Bashar al-Assad."

In the wake of Syrian army cross-border raids into east Lebanon that left three dead, tension has been on the rise in the remote region as anxious residents brace for more incursions.

"The people of Qaa sleep in fear now," said Mansour Saad, mayor of the village which straddles the border with Syria.

An Arab delegation led by Qatar was headed for Damascus on Wednesday for mediation between the Syrian government and its opponents, even as activists rejected dialogue and called for a general strike.

"We will begin our meeting with Syrian officials in Damascus at around 3:00 pm (12:00 GMT) to inform them of the initiative, agreed upon by 21 foreign ministers," Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi told Agence France Presse.

A source close to former Premier Saad Hariri slammed Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah for saying that the security situation in Lebanon was stable at the time when several kidnappings have taken place.

The al-Mustaqbal movement source told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat that Nasrallah talked in his TV interview on Monday at a time when Syrian opposition activists are being kidnapped, Hizbullah is expanding its telecom network in the town of Tarshish and the Syrian army is infiltrating in Lebanese territories in the Bekaa and North.

Seven security agents were killed in an attack on their road convoy in northwest Syria on Tuesday, apparently carried out by army deserters, a rights group said.

"Armed men, suspected deserters, attacked a security forces convoy at the entrance to Maaret al-Noman town in Idlib province, killing seven agents, including an officer," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad's exiled uncle has arrived in Riyadh to offer his condolences over the death of Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, Saudi news agency SPA said Tuesday.

"Rifaat Assad, uncle of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has arrived in Riyadh to offer his condolences to King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz," said SPA.

The Syrian government has detained more than 30,000 people since launching a deadly crackdown on opposition protests in March, a leading Syrian rights activist said Monday.

President Bashar Assad's government has turned all the country's main football stadiums into prisons, Radwan Ziadeh, co-founder of the Damascus Center for Human Rights and scholar at George Washington University in Washington, told a press conference at the U.N. headquarters.

The West fears that the popular uprising that erupted in Syria might affect the Lebanese local situation, as the Lebanese officials are divided over their responses to the revolt against President Bashar Assad.

“Any new European sanctions will target the financial sector in Syria,” western diplomatic sources told An Nahar newspaper on Tuesday.

Amnesty International has condemned what it calls the "climate of fear" in state hospitals of unrest-strewn Syria where both patients and medics were being targeted.

"The Syrian government has turned hospitals into instruments of repression in its efforts to crush opposition," it said in a 39-page report released late Monday.