Aleppo, the latest battleground in Syria's 16-month uprising, will be the Syrian army's "graveyard," said Colonel Abdel Jabbar al-Oqaidi, the head of the rebels in the city.

It is pitch black as he arrives at an isolated farmhouse surrounded by olive groves in northern Syria for an interview with an Agence France Presse correspondent.

More than 12,000 Syrians fleeing the violence in their home country have sought refuge in Algeria, a source close to the Interior Ministry said on Sunday.

The authorities have decided to "take charge of Syrians who have sought refuge in Algeria, and whose number is estimated officially at 12,000," the source told AFP, although Syrian opposition sources put the number at up to 20,000.

Jordan on Sunday opened its first official refugee camp to help host tens of thousands of Syrians who have fled the mounting violence in its northern neighbor.

"I hope the ordeal of our Syrian brothers will vanish," Interior Minister Ghaleb Zubi told reporters as he and Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh opened the Zaatari camp, which can take up to 120,000 refugees, in Mafraq near the border with Syria.

Syria's main opposition group called on Sunday on the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency session to discuss the fighting in the northern city of Aleppo, saying that the regime is planning "massacres."

"The Syrian National Council calls on the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency session to discuss the situation in Aleppo, Damascus and Homs," the SNC said, adding that the "regime (of President Bashar Assad) is preparing to storm and commit massacres in Aleppo."

Turkey said Sunday it would do everything it could to prevent "terrorist" formations near its border with Syria that would threaten its national security.

"We will not allow the formation of a terrorist structuring near our border," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Turkish television channel Kanal 7.

U.S. defense chief Leon Panetta sets off on an international tour Monday that, after Tunis and Cairo, takes him to Israel and Jordan, in a region that feels threatened by Iran's nuclear program and potential spillover from troubled Syria.

In Jerusalem, the secretary of defense will discuss regional issues with his Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak, among other leaders of the Jewish state.

Qatar is considering buying up to 200 German tanks at a cost of around two billion euros ($2.46 billion), according to a report published on Sunday.

News weekly Spiegel reported that the Qataris were interested in acquiring the Leopard-2 tanks and that a delegation from defense firm Krauss-Maffei Wegmann had already travelled to Qatar to discuss the possible deal.

Two Italian technicians who worked as subcontractors in Syria and went missing for a week in unclear circumstances are on their way back to Italy, the Italian Foreign Ministry said Sunday.

"I am finally sure that they are returning to Italy," Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi said in a statement, following the release late on Friday of the two men, who had been working in Syria for Italian energy group Ansaldo.

A Gulf rights group and a Kuwaiti MP on Sunday criticized the arrest of a member of the Gulf state's ruling family for expressing "political views" deemed offensive.

"Freedom for Sheikh Meshaal al-Malek al-Sabah who was arrested by the state security police," the Gulf Forum for Civil Societies, an organization of liberal activists, said on its Twitter account.

Rebels fighting government forces in Syria's commercial capital Aleppo "will definitely be defeated," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said on an unannounced visit to key ally Iran on Sunday.

"We believe that all the anti-Syrian forces have gathered in Aleppo to fight the government... and they will definitely be defeated," he told a joint news conference in Tehran with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi.