There is still no date for a meeting that aims to form a coalition of Syrian opposition groups before peace talks targeted for January 1, the Saudi foreign minister said Thursday.

Riyadh is trying to bring "as broad a cross-section of Syrian opposition groups as possible" to a meeting in the kingdom, Adel al-Jubeir told a press conference with his Austrian counterpart Sebastian Kurz.

Prime Minister David Cameron argued his case to MPs for Britain to join air strikes on Islamic State (IS) targets in Syria Thursday amid signs that opposition was weakening after the Paris attacks.

Cameron told the House of Commons that Britain should not "wait until an attack takes place here" before acting, adding it was "morally" unacceptable to be "content with outsourcing our security to our allies".

General Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards' foreign operations wing, was lightly injured in fighting against Syria rebels near Aleppo, a monitoring group and a security source said Wednesday.

Soleimani "was injured a few days ago" in an offensive in the southwest of Aleppo province, a security source on the ground told AFP.

Russian warplanes carried out heavy raids in Syria's northern Latakia province on Wednesday, a day after Turkey downed one of Moscow's jets in the area, a monitoring group said.

Warplanes believed to be Russian also carried out strikes near the Turkish border in northern Aleppo province, killing at least three people and setting alight several trucks carrying aid and goods for sale, the monitor and activists said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sought to play down tensions with Russia Wednesday after Turkey's downing of a Russian warplane on the Syria border sparked fears among NATO allies of a wider conflict.

Moscow said Russian and Syrian special forces had rescued one of the pilots who ejected from the plane after being shot down early Tuesday but confirmed another was dead, in an incident that threatens to damage relations between two rival players in the Syrian conflict.

Sitting on a donated couch in her modest Chicago apartment, Safa Mshymish knows she is among the lucky ones: a Syrian refugee welcomed into the United States before the tide of public opinion turned.

It hurts, she said, to hear politicians are trying to stop families just like hers from finding a safe haven, branding all Syrians a security threat in the wake of the Paris attacks.

Syria denounced Turkey's downing of a Russian jet over its territory Tuesday as a "flagrant aggression against Syrian sovereignty" and a show of support for "terrorists," state media reported.

"In a flagrant aggression against Syrian sovereignty, the Turkish side this morning brought down a friendly Russian plan on Syrian territory on its return from a combat mission against Daesh," state news agency SANA cited a military source as saying, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem will meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov for talks in Moscow on Friday, an adviser to Syria's president said.

"We will have an exchange of views on the Vienna meeting and the current situation," said Buthaina Shaaban, who will be part of the Syrian delegation arriving in Moscow on Wednesday.

NATO member Turkey on Tuesday shot down a Russian warplane on the Syrian border, an act President Vladimir Putin said would have "serious consequences" for ties between two key protagonists in the Syria war.

The Turkish army said the plane was shot down by two F-16s after violating Turkish airspace 10 times within a five-minute period, an account challenged by Moscow which said it was over Syria.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Tuesday there was no global support for a U.S.-led ground force to destroy the Islamic State group, which he called fundamentally weak with "more Twitter accounts than fighters".

Calls have been mounting in Canberra for boots on the ground in Syria to combat the threat from Islamic State jihadists and other militant groups in the wake of deadly attacks in Paris this month.