Reinforced sanctions against Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria will be on the agenda of the G8 summit of the world's most powerful leaders Thursday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said.

"Clearly, the question of strengthening sanctions against Syrian leaders needs to be asked. There will be discussions about this tonight," Sarkozy told reporters at the meeting in the French resort of Deauville.

A delegation from the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon traveled to northern Lebanon on Thursday to follow up on the status of Syrian civilians who have fled the violence in Syria, the embassy announced in a statement.

“The delegation also investigated press reports that Lebanese security agencies have repatriated some of these displaced people to Syria against their will,” the embassy added.

Dozens of supporters of Syria's Bashar al-Assad gathered in Beirut Monday to express support for the embattled president, drowning out a nearby vigil in memory of those killed in two months of unrest.

"God, Syria, Bashar" and "Sarkozy, Obama, you brutes, you will never enter Syria," chanted some 50 men in the Hamra district of Beirut amid heavy security.

Funerals were held on Sunday for victims of a fierce Syrian government crackdown on anti-regime protests that killed about 50 people in two days, five of them in a funeral procession, activists said.

In the city of Homs, an epicenter in central Syria of the nine-week uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's regime, hundreds of protesters took to the streets, chanting "down with the regime," an activist said.

Some 1,400 Syrians, many of them women and children without belongings, crossed the border with Lebanon last week to join many more who have fled the unrest at home, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.

"Most of the people who have crossed the border in recent weeks are women and children. In addition to their immediate need for food, shelter and medical help, they also need psycho-social support," UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic told reporters in Geneva.

Syrian security forces on Friday shot dead at least 34 people, including a child, as pro-democracy protests swept the country, with demonstrators pressing on with calls for more freedom in defiance of a fierce crackdown, activists said.

The child was among 12 people killed in the central city of Homs while 15 died in the town of Maaret al-Naaman, near the western city of Idlib, the activists said.

Syrian troops on Thursday began withdrawing from Tall Kalakh, deploying on the outskirts of the western town that had been besieged following pro-democracy protests, a witness told Agence France Presse.

"Some 20,000 soldiers that had been in the town began withdrawing this morning," said the witness who did not want to be identified. "We counted 80 tanks and armored personnel carriers and buses."

U.S. President Barack Obama declared Thursday that the borders of Israel and a Palestinian state must be based on 1967 lines, likely setting up a new clash with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a long-awaited survey of the "Arab spring" of revolts, Obama compared "shouts of human dignity" across the region to America's birth pangs and civil rights struggles, and said the uprisings showed repression would not work.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday sanctioned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and six top aides over their crackdown on popular protests, telling Assad to launch a transition to democracy or step down.

Obama signed the executive order to "increase pressure on the government of Syria to end its use of violence and begin transitioning to a democratic system that ensures the universal rights of the Syrian people," the document said.

Syria's embattled President Bashar al-Assad has said he believes the unrest roiling his country is coming to an end while acknowledging that security services had made mistakes in trying to tame a two-month revolt.

The international community, meanwhile, appeared divided Wednesday on how to tackle the Syrian crisis. Switzerland joined an EU-led sanctions regime, while Russia warned it would oppose any proposed U.N. resolution to intervene with force in Syria.