Syrian rebels seized a government checkpoint on a key highway from Damascus to the border with Jordan on Friday, a watchdog said, as fighting intensified on the outskirts of the capital.

"Rebel fighters took control of the Umm al-Mayathin military checkpoint... in Daraa province in clashes with regime forces," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Almost 35,000 Syrian refugees have returned home from Jordan since their country's conflict broke out in March 2011, but a larger number joined the exodus last month alone, a government spokesman said on Friday.

"34,824 Syrian refugees have gone back to their country since the start of the crisis," Anmar al-Hammud, spokesman for the refugee file, told Agence France Presse.

The families of nine Lebanese pilgrims abducted by rebels in Syria closed on Friday the shops owned by Syrians in a neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs pending the release of their loved ones.

Sheikh Abbas Zgheib, who has been tasked by the Higher Islamic Shiite Council to follow up the case of the men abducted in May last year, told the National News Agency that the closure of the shops in Hay el-Sellom is a first step in the protest aimed at pressuring the involved parties to set the pilgrims free.

When Assad al-Islam and Laila dreamed of their wedding day, they did not imagine it quite like this -- at a rebel base in Syria's Turkmen mountains, surrounded by members of Assad's fighter brigade.

"We have nothing in common. The only thing that brought us together is the revolution against the regime," the young couple says.

The U.N. is hiking its estimates of people trapped in Syria after fleeing their homes, saying Wednesday some four million are now displaced inside the country and in dire need of international help.

The figure, due to be officially released in the coming days, is a dramatic increase on earlier estimates of some 2.5 million displaced put forward by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees for the period from January to June.

At 53, Um Omar has decided to wage her own type of "jihad" in Syria's northern Turkmen Mountains, toiling over pots and pans every day to cook for the area's rebel fighters.

"I wake up at 5:00 in the morning to prepare their meals, and I haven't missed a single day's work in almost a year," she says, ladling diced potatoes she sliced earlier that morning out of a pan of simmering oil.

Syrian state media have sharply criticized Jordan for hosting U.S.-backed training of Syrian rebels seeking to topple President Bashar Assad, warning that Amman risks falling into the "volcanic crater" of Syria's conflict.

The stern warning issued Thursday by state radio and in a front-page editorial in the daily al-Thawra, the mouthpiece of the Syrian government, will likely aggravate Jordan's security fears over the civil war in its northern neighbor.

Fresh battles broke out in a flashpoint district of Aleppo on Monday, while violence raged on the road linking the Syrian city to its international airport, a watchdog said.

"Fierce clashes raged between troops and rebels in the east of Sheikh Maqsoud district," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a day after a major rebel advance in the predominantly Kurdish neighborhood.

President Michel Suleiman asked the army chief on Thursday to deliver the ministry of foreign affairs copies of security reports on the latest Syrian airstrikes on the outskirts of the northeastern town of Arsal.

A statement issued by the presidential palace said Army chief Gen. Jean Qahwaji visited Suleiman who asked him to hand the ministry the copies of the raids in Arsal on Wednesday and another attack that took place on March 18.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has lashed out at the Arab League and its decision to hand Syria's seat to the opposition, saying the body "lacks legitimacy," according to comments published on Thursday.

"The Arab League lacks legitimacy. It's a League that represents the Arab states, not the Arab people, so it can't grant or retract legitimacy," Assad said in extracts from an interview with Turkish media published on the presidency's Facebook page.