Syria Air will resume flights between Beirut and Aleppo twice a week starting Dec. 23, nine years after it suspended its operations between the two cities, the company’s representative in Beirut, Rashed al-Attar, said on Friday.

The National News Agency quoted al-Attar as saying that the Beirut-Aleppo line will consolidate economic, trade, tourism and investment ties between Syria and Lebanon.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati is expected to head to Paris in January to meet with senior French officials including President Nicolas Sarkozy, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Friday.

According to the daily, he will discuss two issues during his stay in France, the first is related to the economy while the second is aimed at stressing the importance of the foreign support granted to the Lebanese army.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday the United States hopes it can work with Russia on the draft resolution it proposed to the U.N. Security Council on the Syria crisis.

Though Clinton said Washington had differences with Moscow on the draft, Clinton said it was the "first time" that Russia has recognized the violence in Syria needs to be taken up by the Security Council.

Russia on Thursday surprised the Western powers by proposing a U.N. Security Council resolution on the Syrian crisis, as France hailed the move as "an extraordinary event."

As a key ally of President Bashar al-Assad, Russia has tried to head off Security Council intervention in the Syria crisis. With China, it vetoed a council resolution proposed by European nations in October condemning Assad's crackdown on protests which the U.N. says has left 5,000 dead.

Canada on Thursday became the first Western nation to order an evacuation of its nationals from Syria, urging some 5,000 Canadians to leave the violence-wracked Middle East nation.

Foreign Minister John Baird urged Canadians in Syria to leave the country "by any available means and while options exist."

A group claiming to represent the majority of the opposition movements inside Syria declared Thursday the foundation of a "National Alliance" of revolutionary forces aiming to topple the regime.

"The regime has killed, maimed, arrested, tortured and displaced tens of thousands of people," Mohammed Bessam Imadi, a former Syrian ambassador to Sweden, told a press conference in Istanbul.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe issued a new call for Syrian President Bashar Assad to quit on Thursday, accusing his regime of committing crimes against humanity on a daily basis.

"More than 5,000 killed, three million Syrians are affected by bloody repression, unspeakable abuse and daily crimes against humanity," Juppe told university students during a visit to Libya's capital.

Iraq will send a delegation to Syria to try to convince Damascus to implement a Baghdad initiative to end months of bloody conflict, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said on Thursday.

"When I arrive in Baghdad, I will hold a meeting to prepare the plans to send a delegation to Syria in order to implement the Iraqi initiative," Maliki told Agence France Presse as he flew back to Iraq from Washington.

Syrian army deserters killed at least 27 soldiers and members of the security forces during clashes in the southern province of Daraa on Thursday, a rights group said.

The fighting broke out at dawn at checkpoints in three separate locations, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement.

Syrian military commanders have ordered troops to indiscriminately shoot at unarmed protesters, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Thursday based on interviews with former soldiers who defected.

The defectors named 74 military and intelligence officers "who allegedly ordered, authorized, or condoned widespread killings, torture, and unlawful arrests," the rights group said in a statement.