Turkey's military Monday struck back at Syrian military positions after a shell fired by the neighboring country landed in a Turkish border area, a Turkish official told Agence France Presse.

Turkey retaliated in kind after the Syrian shell landed in Altinozu district, in southeastern Hatay province, at around 1200 GMT, said the official speaking on condition of anonymity.

Syria on Monday accused Turkey of having made a "political and diplomatic gaffe" with its suggestion that Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa take over from the country's embattled President Bashar Assad.

"What (Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet) Davutoglu said amounts to a flagrant political and diplomatic gaffe," Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi said, quoted on state television.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned on Monday that rising violence along the Syrian-Turkish border and the effect of the Syrian conflict on Lebanon were extremely dangerous.

"The situation in Syria has dramatically worsened. It is posing serious risks to the stability of Syria's neighbors and the entire region," Ban said at the opening of the World Forum for Democracy in the French city of Strasbourg.

Turkish jets bombed Kurdish rebel hideouts in northern Iraq overnight, military sources told AFP, but it was not immediately clear if there were any casualties.

At least 12 F-16 fighter jets took off from the Diyarbakir base in the southeast and targeted four camps in the Kandil Mountains and the surrounding area where the leadership of the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) is believed to be hiding, the sources added.

One person was killed in a car bomb attack on a street in central Damascus on Sunday where the police headquarters is located, Syrian state media said, as the Turkish army returned fire after a shell launched from Syria struck the southeastern Turkish border village of Akcakale, where five civilians were killed last week.

"A martyr fell in the terrorist attack," said the official news agency SANA, shortly after state television reported the car bombing on Khaled bin al-Walid Avenue.

Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa "is a man of reason" who could replace President Bashar Assad as the head of a transition administration to stop Syria's civil war, according to Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

"Farouq al-Sharaa is a man of reason and conscience and he has not taken part in the massacres in Syria. Nobody knows the (Syrian) system better than him," Davutoglu said Saturday on the public television channel TRT.

Forty government soldiers and nine rebels were killed on Saturday when rebels took a town in the northwestern province of Idlib near the border with Turkey, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"The clashes at Khirbat al-Joz... ended when fighters of the rebel brigades took control of the area," said the Britain-based watchdog.

Turkey hit back on Saturday against what it said was a fresh round of mortar fire from Syria, as monitors said rebels seized a Syrian border village after a fierce battle that left almost 30 dead.

Syria, for its part, said four Turks were among a convoy of "terrorists" killed in fighting in the heart of Aleppo, just hours after U.N. condemnation of deadly jihadist bombings in the commercial capital.

The head of Syria's main opposition coalition on Friday accused the Damascus regime of trying to spread the unrest in the country to the region, branding the deadly shelling of a Turkish town "a regime plan".

"This incident was a Syrian regime plan," Syrian National Council Chief Abdel Basset Sayda told reporters at a press conference in Istanbul, referring to the Syrian shelling that left five Turks dead in a nearby border town on Wednesday.

Turkey returned fire Friday after a new Syrian shell landed in on its territory close to their common border, NTV private news channel reported.

The Syrian shell landed in the Turkish town of Altinozu in Hatay province near the border, triggering an immediate response fire from Turkish forces, at around 1630 GMT.