Syrian security forces on Sunday shot dead seven people across the country, the Syrian Revolution General Commission said, as the authorities pressed on with a crackdown on anti-regiment dissent.

Troop reinforcements were dispatched to the flashpoint province of Homs and the Damascus suburb of Douma, activists said.

The Buqayaa smugglers' market on Lebanon's border with Syria, once a hive of shoppers, has become a ghost street since the uprising there, with most shops closed and not a customer in sight.

The once flourishing smuggling operations that supplied the souk have all but halted as Syria boosts security at the border as part of its crackdown on more than six months of anti-regime protests, in which thousands of Syrians have fled violence at home to seek refuge in Lebanon.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stressed that “sooner or later” Syrian President Bashar Assad will be ousted by his own people.

Erdogan, in an interview on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” to be aired Sunday, he said: “You can never remain in power through cruelty. You can never stand before the will of the people.”

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour stressed on Saturday that the Syrian regime will surpass the crisis, urging “friends” to support it to implement reforms.

“I am sure that the Syrian leadership will pass the crisis by implementing reforms and the peoples’ demands,” Mansour said after a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Muallem in New York.

Turkey has stopped a shipload of weapons destined for Syria, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday, warning his country would seize any similar shipment made by air or land.

"Turkey has arrested a ship flying the Syrian flag and carrying weapons," the Anatolia news agency quoted Erdogan as telling the press in New York where he attended the U.N. General Assembly.

France's envoy to Damascus was attacked on Saturday by a crowd throwing stones and eggs at him after he met with Greek Orthodox Patriarch Ignace IV in the Syrian capital, he said.

Eric Chevallier had met with Ignace in the Christian quarter of Damascus's old city when young people and women began chanting slogans in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and threw eggs and stones at the French delegation when the ambassador was going to his car.

The Syrian army's deputy chief of staff has died of a heart attack, the official SANA news agency said on Saturday as anti-regime protests continue to sweep the country.

"The high command of the Syrian armed forces announces the death on Friday at 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) of the army's deputy chief of staff, General Bassam Najm Eddin Antakiali, who succumbed after suffering a heart attack," it said.

Heavy gunshots were fired from Syria towards villages in the northern region of Akkar Friday night, creating a state of panic among the residents in the area, reported Voice of Lebanon radio on Saturday.

Several of them consequently moved to nearby villages in al-Rihanieh and Wadi Khaled to escape the gunshots.

Former Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir will not address the political situation in Lebanon during the Saturday’s mass commemorating the fallen members of the Lebanese Forces, revealed information obtained by Naharnet on Friday.

Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi will be unable to attend, but he will send his deputy Roland Abu Jaoude who will deliver a speech on the patriarch’s behalf.

At least nine deaths were reported in Syria on Friday, a traditional day for protests, as the EU and Switzerland both said they were widening sanctions against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement that nine civilians were shot dead by security forces in the Homs area in the center of the country.