A Syrian reporter for an official radio station and a local television channel was killed on Tuesday by rebel fire outside the capital, state media said.

"Our colleague Batoul Moukhlis Al-Warar, a presenter on Nur al-Sham channel and Damascus radio, has been killed and others wounded in terrorist mortar fire on Dahiyet Al-Assad in Harasta" region, state television said in a breaking news alert.

The General Security announced on Tuesday the arrest of a Lebanese suspect for belonging to the Islamic State extremist group.

It said that the suspect confessed to recruiting Lebanese youths to send them to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the IS.

Human Rights Watch has accused Syrian rebel groups outside Damascus of war crimes after they placed hostages including civilians in cages for use as "human shields" to deter government strikes.

Video posted over the weekend showed dozens of captives, among them soldiers and civilians, in cages being transported to different parts of the Eastern Ghouta region outside Damascus.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said talks on the Syria crisis had unacceptably been taken "hostage" by the question of President Bashar Assad's future, in an interview with Spanish newspapers published Saturday.

"It is totally unfair and unreasonable that the fate of one person takes the whole political negotiation process hostage. It is unacceptable," he said, referring to Assad.

Major powers narrowed their differences over the Syrian war Friday but remained divided over the key issue of the future of President Bashar Assad, France's foreign minister said.

Another round of talks will be held in two weeks' time, Laurent Fabius told reporters in Vienna.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is "winging" it in Syria, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says, in damning remarks of the Kremlin strongman's actions in the war-torn country.

"I personally question whether he has some long-term strategy or whether he is being very opportunistic on a day-to-day basis," Clapper told CNN late Thursday. "And I think his intervention into Syria is another manifestation of that."

The beheaded bodies of a Syrian activist opposed to the Islamic State jihadist group and a friend were found early Friday in the southern Turkish city of Sanliurfa, his colleagues said.

Ibrahim Abdul Qader, 20, and friend Fares Hamadi "were found beheaded at the friend's house this morning," Abu Mohammad, a founder of the activist's "Raqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently" group, told AFP via the Internet.

A German rapper who joined the Islamic State group and publicly threatened President Barack Obama was killed in a U.S. air strike in Syria, a defense official said Thursday.

Denis Cuspert, also known by his artist name Deso Dogg, used to rap in Berlin and was one of the most famous Western fighters for the IS extremist group.

The Kataeb Party has expressed its concern over the possible positions that will be made by Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil at the Vienna international talks tackling the Syrian crisis, reported An Nahar daily on Friday.

It revealed that Kataeb Ministers Sejaan Qazzi, Ramzi Jreij, and Alain Hakim will be “attentive and wary” of any position that will be made in the name of Lebanon on the Syrian conflict.

Major powers, including arch-rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia who back opposing sides in Syria, meet for the first time Friday in search of a political solution to the devastating war.

Top diplomats from more than a dozen nations have gathered in Vienna to narrow differences over the fate of President Bashar Assad, who has defied Western demands to step down.