Russia on Monday called on Syria's newly-united opposition to seek a negotiated solution to the conflict with the regime of President Bashar Assad without interference from abroad.

Syria's opposition factions agreed at a conference in Qatar at the weekend to create a new National Coalition led by moderate Muslim cleric Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib that aims to win broad international recognition.

Syrian warplanes pounded an eastern town on the border with Iraq on Sunday as firefights raged around an army barracks in the northeastern town of Ras al-Ain near Turkey, a watchdog said.

Troops also launched a pre-dawn bombardment of rebel lines near Damascus, after 121 people were reported killed nationwide on Saturday.

The key to resolving the abduction of the Lebanese pilgrims in Syria lies in Turkey's hands, not Syria and Iran, reported the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat on Sunday.

Sheikh Abbas Zgheib, who has been tasked by the Higher Islamic Shiite Council to follow up the case, told the daily: “The families of the pilgrims have not yet taken the decision to stage a protest in front of the Syrian and Iranian Embassies in Beirut.”

Five more lawmakers from Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party have joined a hunger strike by hundreds of Kurdish prisoners, a party official said on Saturday

The five new hunger strikers take to 10 the number of high-level BDP officials, 7 of them lawmakers, taking part in the strike.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due in Egypt on November 17 for talks on boosting ties between the two Muslim countries, foreign ministry spokesman Amr Roshdi said on Saturday.

He said details of the trip were agreed during talks in Ankara on Friday between Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr and his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu.

Kurdish residents backed by militia have taken control of two towns in northeastern Syria near the border with Turkey after convincing pro-government forces to leave, a watchdog said on Saturday.

The region's Hasakeh province has seen heavy fighting in recent days between forces loyal to President Bashar Assad and rebels, with 46 combatants killed in two days as the opposition seized the border town of Ras al-Ain on Friday.

A Turkish military helicopter crashed Saturday in the southeastern city of Siirt, killing all 17 troops on board, local officials said.

An investigation was ongoing to determine why the Sikorsky chopper went down, Siirt province governor Ahmet Aydin said.

Some 8,000 Syrian refugees fled to Turkey overnight in the face of escalating clashes between rebel forces and troops loyal to Damascus near the border, a foreign ministry official told Agence France Presse on Friday.

The latest influx brought the total number of Syrian refugees in Turkey to more than 120,000, the official added on condition of anonymity.

Thirteen Kurd rebels were killed in Turkish air strikes on a town in the Kurdish-dominated southeast of the country after a Turkish soldier was killed in fighting there, local security sources said Friday.

The soldier was killed in clashes that erupted Thursday between Turkish security forces and members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the town of Semdinli that lies close to the border with both Iraq and Iran.

Syrian rebels and forces loyal to Damascus were fighting Thursday for control of a military border crossing in the north of the country on the Turkish frontier, Turkish media reported.

The clashes near the town of Ras al-Ain erupted late Wednesday and were still going on Thursday, the reports said.