Under a huge white tent in the desert dust of Jordan, 100 Syrian refugee children, their own lives blighted, rehearse King Lear, one of Shakespeare's great tragedies.

They form a circle around Syrian actor-turned-director Nawwar Bulbul, who has worked with them for more than two months at Zaatari refugee camp in the hope of drawing attention to their plight.

Jordanian King Abdullah II expressed fear on Saturday over the situation in Lebanon, deeming that it's the most affected by the ongoing conflict in neighboring country Syria.

“Our hearts are with Lebanon as it is affected the most by the Syrian crisis in light of the demographic structure,” the king said in comments published in the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat.

Jordanian border guards have intercepted two vehicles crossing from Syria loaded with arms and thousands of Captagon tablets, a drug widely used by Syrian rebels, the army announced Thursday.

The Petra news agency quoted an army official as saying one of the vehicles and its cargo was destroyed when it was fired on by border guards during the operation late on Wednesday.

A Jordanian soldier jailed for life for the murder of seven Israeli schoolgirls, who had been on a hunger strike for five days, was hospitalized Wednesday after his health deteriorated, police said.

"Ahmad Dakamseh is currently being hospitalized after his health deteriorated because he had been refusing to eat or take medicine since Friday," a statement said.

Jordan's prime minister escaped a no-confidence vote by parliament Tuesday that was motivated by his government's allegedly weak response to the killing of a Jordanian judge by Israeli soldiers.

The 150-member lower house renewed its confidence in Prime Minister Abdullah Nsur by an 81-29 vote, with 20 abstentions and 20 MPs absent.

Jordan said on Monday that Israeli President Shimon Peres had apologized to King Abdullah II for the killing of a Jordanian judge by Israeli troops last week.

Peres for his part issued a statement saying he had called Abdullah to express "deep regret" for the shooting of Palestinian Jordanian Raed Zeiter at a border crossing, but the statement stopped short of quoting a full apology.

Jordan Monday condemned what it called Israeli "escalation" in the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, after a far-right Israeli minister visited the plaza, warning it could cause further violence at the site.

Israeli Housing Minister Uri Ariel, deputy leader of the hardline national religious Jewish Home party, briefly visited the plaza in Jerusalem's Old City on Sunday.

An estimated 10,000 Syrian children in Lebanon are likely to be suffering from malnutrition and has increased by 5.9 percent in 2013, according to a recent UNICEF-led survey as the U.N. agency said nearly 2,000 were at risk of dying if they weren't immediately treated.

Trapped in her northern Syrian village by fighting, Mervat watched her newborn baby progressively shrink. Her daughter's dark eyes seemed to grow bigger as her face grew more skeletal. Finally, Mervat escaped to neighboring Lebanon, and a nurse told her the girl was starving.

Syrian refugees in a sprawling desert camp in Jordan fear that President Bashar Assad's likely re-election this year will leave their dream of a return home as distant as ever.

As Syria's war entered its fourth year this weekend, many of the around 100,000 refugees in Zaatari camp see no end in sight to their misery.

A Jordanian soldier serving a life sentence for murdering Israeli schoolgirls in 1997 is on a hunger strike to demand his release following the the killing of a Jordanian judge by Israeli soldiers, his son said Saturday.

"My father started a hunger strike on Friday. He said he demands the government release him from jail after the Israelis killed Jordanian judge Raed Zeiter," Ahmad Dakamseh's son Seif told AFP.