Syria, on state TV, said authorities clashed with "terrorists" in Hama suburbs, killed some and arrested many others.

State-run news agency SANA said Syrian forces were "severely hitting the mercenary terrorists in a number of neighborhoods in the city of Aleppo."

Before she was killed in a gun battle in Aleppo, Japanese journalist Mika Yamamoto spent her final moments filming in the besieged city. Her colleagues released her final footage Wednesday.

"They are shooting indiscriminately; they are dropping bombs onto the town from bombers onto people, running about one after the other, without discrimination," Yamamoto says in the video, shot Monday.

After a single gunshot is heard, the footage ends.

Wounded refugees enter Iraq

Fighting was under way Wednesday between Syrian forces and the rebel Free Syrian Army near the Iraqi border, in the Albu Kamal area, according to Iraqi army officers at the border.

Rebels overtook some Syrian military posts in the area, but regime forces were working to regain control of the area, the officers said.

Late Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, Iraqi security officers heard explosions that they identified as fire from tanks and heavy artillery used by Syrian military forces.

The Free Syrian Army handed over to Iraqi authorities for treatment 25 casualties, including children and women, said Mahmoud Abu al-Taeib, deputy head of a refugee center in al-Qaim at the Iraqi border.

The Iraqi army was on alert, he said.

Nearly 4,000 Syrian refugees have crossed the border from Albu Kamal alone.

The president's inner circle: Al-Assad's resignation can't be a condition for dialogue

If the West continues to insist on al-Assad's resignation, there is zero chance he'll negotiate with rebels, according to Syria's deputy prime minister.

Requiring the resignation "as a condition before dialogue means that there will be no dialogue," Qadri Jamil said Tuesday, according to Russia's state-run RIA Novosti news agency. "If this issue is being imposed on us from abroad, it is a very dangerous precedent in international relations."

But the odds of a meaningful dialogue between the regime and rebels appear slim to begin with.

The government has said it will offer amnesty to rebels who lay down their arms, but rebels say they can't let the regime's attacks continue without defending themselves and fighting back.

The region: Fierce clashes ease in neighboring Tripoli, Lebanon

Sniper fire broke out Wednesday in two dueling neighborhoods in Tripoli: one dominated by Alawite Muslims, the other by Sunni Muslims.

The Syrian civil war has aggravated decades-old quarrels between the Jabal Mohsen and Bab al Tabaneh neighborhoods, and factions supporting and opposing the uprising in Syria.