BEIRUT - Syrian warplanes struck rebel positions near a besieged military air base and other rebel-held areas in the country's north Tuesday as regime forces stepped up attacks against opposition fighters in the key province of Aleppo, activists said.

BEIRUT - Syria's president warned that Europe "will pay a price" if it delivers weapons to rebels fighting to topple him, saying in an interview published Monday that arming them would backfire as the "terrorists" return to their countries with extremist ideologies.

Bashar Assad also dismissed the U.S. administration's findings that the Syrian army used chemical weapons in the civil war.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration, trying to avoid getting drawn deeper into Syria's civil war, has pointed to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a symbol of what can go wrong when America's military wades into Middle East conflicts.

But experts say the White House is looking at the wrong Iraq war, especially as the U.S. reluctantly considers a no-fly zone over Syria to stop President Bashar Assad from continuing to use his air power to crush rebel forces or kill civilians.

CAIRO - Egypt's Islamist president announced Saturday that he was cutting off diplomatic relations with Syria and closing Damascus' embassy in Cairo, decisions made amid growing calls from hard-line Sunni clerics in Egypt and elsewhere to launch a "holy war" against Syria's embattled regime.

BEIRUT - Hezbollah's leader vowed Friday that his militants would keep fighting in Syria "wherever needed" after the U.S. agreed to arm the rebels in the civil war, setting up a proxy fight between Iran and the West that threatens to engulf more of the Middle East.

BERLIN - A top commander of a Nazi SS-led unit accused of burning villages filled with women and children lied to American immigration officials to get into the United States and has been living in Minnesota since shortly after World War II, according to evidence uncovered by The Associated Press.

Syria's government used the nerve agent sarin on two occasions in the embattled city of Aleppo in March and April, according to a letter from a top U.S. diplomat that The Associated Press obtained Friday.

The letter from U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also cited two other incidents of possible chemical weapons use by the regime of President Bashar Assad.

BEIRUT - Syrians are being killed at an average rate of 5,000 per month, the U.N. said Thursday as it raised the overall death toll in the civil war to nearly 93,000, with civilians bearing the brunt of the attacks.

The grim estimate reflects the growing sectarian nature of the bloodshed as the regime of President Bashar Assad scores a series of battlefield successes against the rebels.