Turkey's prime minister called Sunday for an end to the bloody crackdown on protestors in Syria, warning the regime could face the same fate as recently ousted governments in the Arab world.

"A regime cannot survive by force, brutality, by shooting and killing unarmed people taking to the streets. The only solution is to silence arms immediately and listen to the demands of the people," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a televised address to the nation.

Iran on Sunday cautioned NATO against any military intervention in its main regional ally Syria, warning the transatlantic alliance that it “would drown in a swamp from which it would never be able to escape.”

“Syria is the spearhead of resistance in the Middle East and the NATO alliance cannot intimidate this country by waging an attack,” Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in an interview with the official IRNA news agency.

Syrian authorities pursuing a crackdown against President Bashar Assad's critics banned three prominent opposition figures from leaving the country Sunday.

Michel Kilo, Loay Hussein and Fayez Sara were on their way to neighboring Lebanon to take part in a televised panel discussion when they were told by Syrian immigration authorities at the border that they were prohibited from leaving out of concern for their safety in Lebanon.

A U.N. humanitarian mission to Syria found an "urgent need" to protect civilians against excessive force and reported widespread intimidation, a U.N. spokesman said Friday.

The mission was the first allowed into Syria since President Bashar al-Assad launched his deadly crackdown on opposition protests in March.

Russia on Friday proposed a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria that would omit Western calls to sanction President Bashar al-Assad for his deadly crackdown on opposition protests, diplomats said.

Signaling an intensifying Security Council battle on how to act over Syria, a European-U.S. resolution calling for sanctions and a Russia draft which only calls on Assad to implement reforms were officially put forward Friday for a potential vote.

Security sources killed six people when they opened fire on demonstrations across Syria on the last Friday of Ramadan, as tens of thousands of protesters flooded the country’s streets vowing to bring down President Bashar al-Assad’s regime despite deadly crackdowns.

Protesters took to the streets in response to calls by The Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook group which urged rallies under the banner of "Friday of patience and determination."

A senior Syrian general who was assassinated in 2008 was most likely the victim of a power struggle between figures linked to Bashar al-Assad's regime, France told U.S. envoys at the time.

According to a U.S. diplomatic cable published online by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks, a senior adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy and an expert from the foreign ministry branded the killing a "mafia-like hit".

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Wednesday the Syrian people "have the right to democracy too" following a meeting with a leader of the Libyan rebel movement that toppled Moammar Gadhafi's regime.

"Syrians have the right to democracy too, and they are not condemned to being suppressed by a regime that does not understand we are living in a new century," Sarkozy said, while nevertheless ruling out military intervention.

Syrian security forces killed seven people, including a woman who died under torture, and arrested more than 150 others over the past 24 hours, activists said on Wednesday.

Four people were killed in the protest hub of Homs in central Syria and two demonstrators were killed in Talbisseh, north of the city, by security forces Wednesday, said the Local Coordination Committees which groups activists on the ground.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must step down because he is as "irrelevant" to the future of his country as Moammar Gadhafi is in Libya, Britain's deputy prime minister said Monday.

With Gadhafi's regime apparently in its final throes as rebel fighters move into Tripoli, Nick Clegg said the situation in Syria was "less encouraging".