U.S. military officials said Friday that American help for Syrian rebels is likely to escalate gradually, beginning with basic equipment like body armor and night-vision goggles and shifting later to weapons and ammunition.

The officials told NBC News that providing the rebels with heavy weapons, such as anti-tank or anti-aircraft rockets, was not being actively considered. The gradual timetable could be accelerated if circumstances change, the officials said.

The details came a day after the White House said that it believed the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad had used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, against the rebels.

As a result, President Barack Obama decided to provide “military support” to a major opposition group in Syria, Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, told reporters.

The military officials told NBC News that the timing of the support was the decision of the White House and State Department, with the Defense Department providing some material and delivering it to the region.

The U.S. military could also provide the rebels with strategic and tactical combat training, most likely in Jordan, where some combat elements are already positioned for a previously scheduled exercise.

A Patriot missile defense system and as many as eight F-16 fighter jets will likely remain in Jordan following the exercise. Elements of a Marine Corps expeditionary force off the helicopter carrier USS Kearsarge are expected to arrive in Jordan soon.

Defense officials stressed that there was no consideration being given to using American ground forces. For now, they also rule out imposing a no-fly zone.

Earlier Friday, Syria said that the United States was lying about the regime's use of chemical weapons, while Russia called the claims unconvincing — a dramatic turn in the two-year conflict.

"The United States, in resorting to a shameful use of pretexts in order to allow President Obama's decision to arm the Syrian opposition, shows that it has flagrant double standards in the way it deals with terrorism," Syria's foreign ministry said.

Syria has maintained that "terrorists" are using the chemical weapons.

Russia, which has opposed sanctions and vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions to put pressure on Assad, reacted with skepticism to the White House's announcement.

President Vladimir Putin's senior foreign policy adviser said Friday that the information the U.S. has "does not look convincing."

Yuri Ushakov said more U.S. military support for Assad's opponents would undermine joint efforts to bring together Syrian government and opposition representatives for peace talks. 

According to the United Nations' human rights office, the two-year-old war in Syria has killed almost 93,000 people, although it says the real number is likely to be much higher.

The United Kingdom, which says it provided evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria to a United Nations investigation, had not decided whether to arm the rebels, a government spokesman said Friday.

"Nothing is off the table," the spokesman said, adding that the U.K. was "in urgent discussions with [its] international partners."

On Wednesday, British Prime Minister David Cameron said he was eager to host the G8 summit next week in Northern Ireland. "We should use the G8 to try and bring pressure on all sides to bring about ... a peace conference, a peace process, and a move towards a transitional government in Syria," he said.

In an interview with the BBC on Friday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the UN Security Council to "achieve a united approach."

But France raised the concern that a Security Council resolution, such as the establishment of a no-fly zone over Syria, would face opposition from some members. 

Slideshow: Syria uprising

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A look back at the conflict that has overtaken the country.

Launch slideshow

"The problem with this type of measure is that it can only be put in place with approval from the international community," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot said Friday.

NBC's Albina Kovalyova and Reuters contributed to this report.

Related stories:

• US offers Syrian rebels 'military support,' alleges Assad used chemical weapons
• First thoughts: What's the endgame for Syria?
• 'Long overdue': Reactions to White House announcement on Syria
• Analysis: A battle may be won, but war will rage on for Syria's Assad

DAMASCUS, Syria -- Two suicide bombers hit a central Damascus square Tuesday, killing at least 14 people, activists and the state media reported. Activists said one of the explosions took place inside a police station and that many of the dead were policemen.

Syrian state TV quoted a security official as saying 14 people died in explosions caused by two "terrorist" suicide bombers near a police station in the bustling Marjeh Square in the heart of the capital. The official said another 31 were wounded.

The state-run Ikhbariya TV station showed footage of broken shop facades and mangled cars in the central square as ambulance workers were seen carrying the wounded on stretchers.

Marjeh Square has been the scene of previous attacks this year.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists on the ground in Syria, said 15 were killed in the explosions, one of which was caused by a man blowing himself up inside the police station in Marjeh Square. The group said the other explosion occurred outside the police station. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the two accounts.

SANA via AP

A photo from official Syrian news agency SANA shows damage from one of two suicide bombings Tuesday.

Suicide attacks and car bombs have become common in Damascus. Tuesday's twin explosions in the capital are the first since government troops, backed by fighters from Lebanon's Shiite group Hezbollah, captured Qusair, a strategic town in the central province of Homs, the linchpin linking Damascus with the regime strongholds on the Mediterranean coast.

Following the capture of Qusair, Syrian state-run media and the Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar TV have said the regime is preparing an offensive reportedly named Operation Northern Storm to recapture Aleppo. The regime was also believed to be advancing on the central city of Homs.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but car bombs and suicide attacks targeting Damascus and other cities that remain under government control have been claimed in the past by the al Qaeda-affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra — one of scores of rebel factions fighting the forces of President Bashar Assad.

On Saturday, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden car in the central city of Homs, tearing through an area largely populated by the regime's Alawite sect and killing seven people.

Syria's conflict started with largely peaceful protests against Assad's regime in March 2011 but eventually turned into a civil war that has killed more than 80,000 people, according to the United Nations.

Related:

• Analysis: War will rage on for Syria's Assad
• France 'certain' Sarin gas used in Syria
• More Syria coverage from NBC News

Chris Hondros / Getty Images file

A U.S. Marine MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) ration package is seen in a transport vehicle in March 2010 near Khan Neshin, southern Helmand province, Afghanistan.

Marines at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan will lose a key daily meal starting Saturday, causing some to forgo a hot breakfast and others to work six-plus hours without refueling on cooked food, according to Marines at the base and Marine Corps officials.

The midnight ration service — known there as “midrats" — supplies breakfast to Marines on midnight-to-noon shifts and dinner to Marines who are ending noon-to-midnight work periods. It's described as one of the few times the Marines at Leatherneck can be together in one place.

The base, which is located in Afghanistan’s southwestern Helmand Province, flanked by Iran and Pakistan, also will remove its 24-hour sandwich bar. It plans to replace the dishes long offered at midnight with pre-packaged MREs, said Marine Corps Lt. Col. Cliff Gilmore, who has been deployed in Afghanistan since February. 

The moves, though unpopular with many Marines on the ground and their families back home, are emblematic of the massive drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan and the dismantling of U.S. military facilities. More than 30,000 U.S. service members will leave Afghanistan in coming months as the U.S. prepares to hand responsibility for security to Afghan forces in 2014.

While no Marine at Camp Leatherneck agreed to speak on the record, many are privately angry about the hit on base morale.

"This boils my skin. One of my entire shifts will go 6.5 hours without a meal. If we need to cut back on money I could come up with 100 other places,” one Leatherneck-based Marine wrote in an email this week to his wife and shared with NBC News. (The Marine declined to speak on the record.) “Instead, we will target the biggest contributor to morale. I must be losing my mind. What is our senior leadership thinking? I just got back from flying my ass off and in a few days, I will not have a meal to replenish me after being away for over 9 hours.”

Brennan Linsley / AP file

U.S. Marines enter the chow hall for dinner, left, after taking turns clearing ammo from the chambers of their weapons into a barrel, right, at Camp Leatherneck, in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, in September 2009.

Until Saturday, Leatherneck’s dining facility will offer its customary four meals per day. After June 1, the menu drops to three daily meals and, eventually, there will be only two hot meals served, Gilmore revealed in an email to the impacted Marines, adding: “Any time a dining hall meal is eliminated it will be replaced from a plentiful stock of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat — or any one of several creative acronyms our Marines have come up with.)”

“The fact is our force in Afghanistan is shrinking fast and all the creature comforts and services deployed military-members have grown accustomed to over the past decade are going to be reduced," Gilmore wrote in an email to NBC News. “When serving we are challenged to endure different things — to face different challenges — over time. But we're an odd bunch, we Marines — probably no surprise that we'll complain more about losing the sandwich bar on the way out than we did about getting shot at on the way in.”

The tactical reason for the cooking scale-down is that the people who are assigned to “support services” — such as food workers — “need to go home before the people who provide the security which enables those services,” Gilmore wrote. “This is a natural outcome of the drawdown process unrelated to sequestration or the ongoing budget issues back in the States.”

Back home, spouses and friends of the troops in Afghanistan are criticizing the loss of hot meals as a poor logistical choice that will impact the service members' overall nutrition, energy and spirits. 

“MREs are an alternative for when you can’t get to healthy food. They're supposed to be for desperation,” said Babette Maxwell, founder and executive director of Military Spouse Magazine, the wife of a Navy pilot and an advocate for service members and their families. “These guys have six to nine months left on their deployment. These are highly athletic and highly physical people, toting guns, not working any less now than before — and not working out any less either. Now, they’re short a meal and they don’t have any healthy alternatives.”

According to the Marine Corps, a typical MRE may contain chili with beans, cornbread, cheese spread, crackers, a toaster pastry, a “dairyshake,” red pepper, a spoon, a flameless heater and a “hot beverage bag.”

To fill the hot food gap in Afghanistan, a group of U.S.-based military advocates and military-family members recently launched a Facebook page — called “Breakfast for Bagram" — to spur food donations that will be mailed to troops all around Afghanistan. The page states: “We are here to help collect and send non-perishable breakfast type foods to the deployed troops on the 17 bases in Afghanistan that are not currently serving breakfast 'hot chow' and Midnight chow due to the budget cuts.”

Gilmore described cooked-meal reduction as part of a larger effort to “become increasingly austere” as the force shrinks, but he said the base members will not face an unhealthy calorie shortage.

“The Marines here at Leatherneck may have to endure the monotony of a limited menu and sometimes an MRE — but they will not suffer from malnutrition unless they choose not to eat,” Gilmore said. 

At home, some military family members nonetheless called the change a mistake. 

“Psychologically, midrats is probably the most important of all the meals because that’s the big social time — where first (shift) crew is coming off and second (shift) crew is coming on,” Maxwell said."That's where you get the esprit de corps, the camaraderie. It's not just the food you're taking away, it's their social sustenance.”  

The Taliban in Afghanistan will never be completely defeated and this year's fighting season is still "up for grabs," the commander of NATO-led forces in southwestern Afghanistan said Wednesday.

"If we think the Taliban will be completely destroyed, that's not feasible. They'll continue to show up," Major General Lee Miller told reporters at the Pentagon during a briefing via satellite from Afghanistan. 

“The key is to get the Afghan national security forces to the level where they can maintain security for the populace of Afghanistan," he added.

Miller said that in recent months Afghan forces have made significant progress in their ability to defend against Taliban attacks, citing success in an ongoing battle in Sangin, in Helmand Province -- an area that has been a hotbed for insurgents. The fighting, which began May 25, should be over in a matter of hours, Miller predicted.

Even with the expected Afghan Security Forces victory, Miller warned: "The fighting season is still up in the air and up for grabs."

With international combat troops preparing to withdraw by the end of 2014, Afghan forces are taking on new levels of responsibility during the warm weather months when most combat occurs.

Miller said Sangin shows that Afghans are increasingly ready for the challenge, saying that they have only asked for airlift and logistical support, and have turned down NATO offers for more aid.

Miller said the number of Taliban who attacked Sangin was only around 150, but a U.S. military official estimated the number was more than 200.

Those figures include some foreign fighters, Miller said, but when asked of their nationality he said only, "at this time, I'd prefer not to answer that."

In late 2010 more than 20,000 Marines were sent into Helmand to combat the Taliban in what was some of the bloodiest fighting in the 12-year war. It was one of the most dangerous places on earth and the marines sustained heavy casualties over several months of fighting.

Related:

4 killed as Red Cross building is attacked

Mohammad Ismail / Reuters

An Afghan pharmacist analyzes samples of drugs at a laboratory under the Interior Ministry's Counter Narcotics in Kabul on Sunday. Impoverished Afghanistan, already plagued by insurgency and struggling to contain crippling rates of opium addiction, faces another potential headache with spiraling usage of crystal methamphetamine.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Impoverished Afghanistan, already plagued by insurgency and struggling to contain crippling rates of opium addiction, faces another potential headache with spiraling usage of the synthetic drug crystal methamphetamine.

The growing use of the drug, known as crystal meth or ice, comes at a critical time. Some fear that, with the exit of most foreign troops by the end of next year and dwindling interest and aid from the international community, significant addiction to the relatively new drug could wreak social havoc.

The number of crystal meth samples taken from seizures tripled to 48 in 2012 compared with the year before, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Importantly, however, there are concerns the power vacuum left by the withdrawal of foreign troops could turn Afghanistan into a new route for moving Iranian-made crystal meth to nations in the Pacific, such as Thailand and Indonesia, through Pakistan.

"It's a potential threat," a Kabul-based official from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) told Reuters, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Small quantities of around half a kilogram are usually seized, said Peter Bottomley, the UNODC's consultant in Kabul, describing it as a "worrying trend."

"If this country gets addicted to meth, there will be a big problem," Bottomley said.

Afghanistan is the world's top producer of opium, from which heroin is made and which helps fund the Taliban's insurgency, and is heading for a near-record this year, the UNODC has said.

Ahmad Masood / Reuters, file

Drug addicts visit the Nejat drug rehabilitation center, an organization funded by the United Nations, providing harm reduction and HIV/AIDS awareness, in Kabul on January 29, 2012.

Treatment options for Afghanistan's 1 million heroin addicts, some of whom inject into their groins in broad daylight in central Kabul, are sorely limited.

In the country's sole, ultra-secretive drugs lab on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghan pharmacists analyze samples from seizures brought in on a daily basis, which are subject to three rounds of testing to identify the substance and its potency.

A sack of translucent crystals resembling large grains of sea salt sat on one of the lab's tables -- one of the recent seizures of crystal meth. It stood out starkly among the brown hues of heroin, opium, morphine and hashish in tiny bags.

"If only we could get the punishment increased for selling this," said Mohammad Khalid Nabizada, the head of the lab, which operates under the Interior Ministry's Counter Narcotics Police.

Prison terms for selling crystal meth are relatively light, with dealers facing up to one year behind bars for a kilogram (2.2 lbs.), compared with up to three years for opium and a maximum of 10 years for the same amount of heroin.

Dubbed "glass" in Afghanistan, crystal meth appeared there only in recent years and is made in high-tech labs across the border in Iran. Most of it is consumed in the border provinces of Herat and Nimroz, but seizures have been scattered across the country.

Its street price is about $20, or five times that of heroin, making it relatively expensive in one of the world's poorest countries, said Ahmad Khalid Mowahid, spokesman for the Criminal Justice Task Force that convicts serious drug offenders.

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow

But its rocketing use hints at falling exclusivity.

"If glass users are added to our opium addicts, it'll be a disaster. Meth addicts jump off roofs and punch fists in walls. Imagine such abnormal behavior here," Mowahid told Reuters.

He said Afghanistan does not have the "medicine nor the means" to try to contain a growing meth addiction.

The United States is no stranger to the epidemic of crystal meth, where homemade labs and a booming Mexican trade have consumed small towns.

"It has that same look coming out of Iran, of large-scale commercial properties. ... It can become a cancer," the DEA official said.

Related:

• PhotoBlog: Lifting the veil on Afghanistan's female addicts
• 'Global war on drugs has failed,' key panel says
• Shocking mug shots reveal toll of drug abuse

Bulent Kilic/ AFP - Getty Images

A man stands in a damaged building on May 12, 2013 on a street hit by a car bomb explosion which went off on May 11 in Reyhanli in Hatay, just a few miles from the main border crossing into Syria.

REYHANLI, Turkey – Muafaq Nasan rushed towards the bloody and broken bodies to take the wounded to the hospital right after the huge blast, but a crowd stopped him.

“The people began to scream, ‘Syrians must be expelled, they are responsible,'” the 37-year-old Syrian said. 

The Turkish mob turned on Syrian women and children standing nearby and beat them too, Nasan said.

“It is difficult to be exposed to humiliation by people I thought were like my parents and my brothers,” the father-of-two said.

Now he hardly leaves the apartment he shares with his family, and watches from the window as mourners pray for those who died in the bombings.

“I had felt safe here,” Nasan said.

Bulent Kilic/ AFP - Getty Images

A Syrian refugee drives a car with mattresses and suitcases tied on the top of the vehicle at Cilvegozu border gate to go back to Syria on May 14, 2014 after car bombings in Reyhanli, Turkey.

Nasan is one of an estimated 25,000 Syrians living in Reyhanli, a Turkish town of around 90,000 near the border with Syria. Syrian refugees’ attempts to flee the conflict that has already killed around 80,000 and displaced millions suffered a huge blow on May 11 when two car bombs killed 51 people and injured close to 150 in Reyhanli.

Turkey has said it thinks Syrian intelligence was behind the attacks, a claim the government of Bashar Assad denies. On Wednesday, the Turkish government said it was closing the crossing to Syria close to Reyhanli for security reasons. It also announced that it was building 1.5-mile twin security walls at the crossing at the frontier.

Authorities have also deployed security throughout Reyhanli to help stem the violence.  Nevertheless, members of the town's population who had previously welcomed the Syrian refugees – some of whom opened barber shops, restaurants and Internet cafes – have now turned against the newcomers. Gangs hunt cars with Syrian license plates and attack those inside, refugees say.

“Uncle Musa” avoids leaving the apartment he shares with his 10 children. (Many refugees asked that they be identified by one name only in order to protect family still in Syria.)

“In Syria, we were afraid to go out of the house for fear that the regime could maybe beat or arrest or even kill us,” he said, sitting on the ground with his family. “And now I have the same feeling here.  From the first moment of the explosion, people hit men here, women and even children.”

Ammar Cheikhommar/ NBC News

Muafaq Nasan, he is one of an estimated 25,000 Syrians living in Reyhanli, a Turkish town of around 90,000 near the border with Syria.

He gestured around him. 

“When I see these children and they are prisoners in my own house, and they cannot get out, this breaks my heart,” Musa said. “Children do not bear the guilt of what happened.”

According to Musa and others, thousands of refugees have fled Reyhanli and gone back to Syria.

There are Turks who believe that the only way to keep the violence away is to run all the rest of the Syrians out of town. One is Ayhan Cuneydi Oglu, whose restaurant was damaged in one of the bombings.

He says he is still scared, and very angry about the violence visited on him and his customers, three of whom remain in the hospital. A fourth, a relative, died in the attack.

While there are a lot of “respected and honorable” Syrians, the solution is to expel them all, the 30-year-old said.

“The only solution is to keep all of them far from here without distinction,” Oglu said.  “Men, women and kids.”

Not all of the Turkish residents of Reyhanli feel this way. 

Ahmad Khakje, who prays at a small shrine built in honor of his brother and a son, both of whom died in the blasts, became visibly angry when it was suggested that Syrians should be expelled.

“They are our brothers,” he exclaimed.  “The aim of this explosion is to force them out of here [but] I don’t want them to go, they have no one to stand with them.”

Against this background of fury and grief, Nasan, the Syrian who tried unsuccessfully to help victims of the May 11 bombings, considers his options: taking his wife and two children back to the vicious war raging in Syria, or staying to face the stubborn hostility and anger in Turkey.

“I’m afraid for my family to return to Syria, but I don’t think the situation will get any better here,” he said.  “I prefer to be beaten or killed in my own country instead.”

Israeli soldiers were scouring the northern part of the country Monday after reports that a rocket was fired toward the area from southern Lebanon.

Lebanese and Israeli media, citing security sources in both countries, reported that residents in the Marjayoun area of Lebanon, about six miles from the Israeli border, heard either the launch or the sound of a missile streaking through the air.

An IDF spokesman said residents of Metula, Israel, then heard an explosion, according to The Jerusalem Post.

"We haven't opened the bomb shelters, but we are ready," the newspaper quoted an IDF spokesperson as saying.

It was not clear who fired the rocket or mortar.

IDF teams found no sign of an exploded rocket or other projectile Sunday night and were searching again Monday, Reuters reported.

The incident comes as tensions from Syria have boiled over into Lebanon, where the militant group Hezbollah has vowed to support Syrian President Bashar Assad in the two-year civil war that has claimed more than 70,000 lives, according to U.N. estimates.

Israel, which keeps a wary eye on Hezbollah, has launched airstrikes in Syria that it says were aimed at the militant group and not the Syrian government.

Israel has repeatedly said that it would not allow long-time enemy Hezbollah to obtain sophisticated weapons.

There are also fears that Hezbollah’s backing of Assad could further inflame sectarian violence in Lebanon.

On Sunday, two missiles struck a Shiite Muslim area in southern Beirut that is considered a Hezbollah stronghold. Sunni Muslims in Lebanon tend to support the rebel forces fighting Assad.

NBC News' Lawahez Jabari and Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

• Israel and Syria clash on cease-fire line
• In Syria, 'winning' is a relative term
• Full Syria coverage on NBCNews.com

Courtesy Save a Child's Heart

A Syrian woman sits at the bedside of her four-year-old daughter in the children's ward at the Wolfson hospital, south of Tel Aviv. The girl was brought to Israel for life-saving treatment with help from the non-profit group Save a Child's Heart.

The young girl was dying when she arrived in the land of her country’s enemy.

A heart condition had left the 4-year-old Syrian struggling to walk or even talk.

But in Israel – a country still in a state of cease-fire with Syria after the Yom Kippur War four decades ago -- she found her saviors.

Admitted earlier this month to the Wolfson Medical Center, south of Tel Aviv, she underwent life-saving surgery.

The girl is now recuperating on a ward along with children from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Sudan, Romania, China and Israel.

"She would have definitely died if she wouldn’t have arrived here," Ilan Cohen, one of the doctors who treated her, said.

"A lot of patients arrive here from enemy countries and view Israelis as demons. They are surprised that we are human without horns on our heads," he added. "This is the first time they see Israelis without a uniform and I think it's a good surprise.”

Her treatment was the work of “Save a Child's Heart,” an Israeli nonprofit organization started by the late Ami Cohen, who moved to Israel from the United States in 1992.

He joined the staff of the Wolfson with a vision to mending children's hearts from around the world. The organization he began has since helped treat 3,200 children from 45 countries.

Save a Child's Heart also trains doctors from around the world so they can go back and treat patients locally.

"We have limited capacity and we can't treat the millions who need our help," Ilan Cohen said. "This is our most important task.”

Jim Hollander / EPA, file

Intensive care unit doctors Rahel Sion Sarid, right, and Eldar Schneider, wheel a Save a Child's Heart patient from surgery at the Wolfson Hospital, south of Tel Aviv, Israel.

Refugees in their own country – wracked by a brutal civil war between President Bashar Assad’s regime and opposition rebels for more than two years – the mother's and daughter’s journey to safety was a long and dangerous one.

They made their way to Israel through a third country, the name of which has not been made known for security reasons.

The child and her mother are also not being named because of a potentially hostile reaction should they eventually return home.

"It's just too dangerous," said Fatma Sarsour, Arabic translator for Save a Child's Heart.

"At some point, both daughter and mother will go back to Syria and they want to keep this trip a secret,” she said.

As recently as Tuesday, Syrian and Israeli troops exchanged fire on the cease-fire line on the Golan Heights. Israel has also sent its warplanes to bomb targets in Syria to prevent weapons getting through to Assad-allied Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

Sansour said that when the girl arrived in Israel she was clearly “very sick.”

“It was hard for her walk or talk,” she said.

She was found to have only one functional ventricle – a type of chamber -- in her heart instead of the normal two.

In mid-May, she underwent a three-hour operation and she is now back on her feet and walking the hospital halls.

Her middle-aged mother appeared uncomfortable with media attention because of the perils of being identified and declined to comment.

But the girl is back to being a cute 4-year-old with a shy smile, despite the stitches on her chest.

She has been making friends with other children of various nationalities on the ward.

Alona Raucher-Shternfeld, a pediatric cardiologist with Save a Child's Heart who also helped treat the child, hopes this example of harmony between different nationalities and creeds can help inspire the wider world to better relations.

"We all hope that the co-existence that we created here in the clinic is a sign to what really can be achieved in the future.”

Related:

• Israel and Syria clash on Golan Heights cease-fire line
• Israel strikes Syrian military research center, US official says
• On the Brink: Syria chaos looms large over Obama's Israel trip

The leader of Lebanese guerrilla movement Hezbollah said on Saturday his group would stay in the Syrian war "to the end of the road" and bring victory to its ally President Bashar al-Assad. 

Hassan Nasrallah, head of the militant Shi'ite Muslim group, said in a televised speech that Syria and Lebanon were facing a threat from radical Sunni Islamists, which he argued was a plot devised by the United States and its allies to serve Israel's interests in the region. 

"We will not rely on anyone ... like all the battles before this one: We will be its people, its men, and we will be the ones who bring it victory," he said, speaking from an undisclosed location. 

"We will continue to the end of the road, we accept this responsibility and will accept all sacrifices and expected consequences of this position," he said in the televised footage, which showed thousands of cheering people watching him on big screens in the Lebanese town of Mashgara. 

Assad comes from the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. He has been bankrolled by regional Shi'ite power Iran and now increasingly by Hezbollah, Tehran's Lebanese proxy which was founded as a resistance movement to Israel. 

Violence from the Syrian conflict, which began as a peaceful protest movement but descended into civil war, has increasingly spilled over into Lebanon, particularly in the northern city of Tripoli. 

Hezbollah's participation in a battle at the town of Qusair on the Syrian-Lebanese border risks dragging Lebanon into a conflict that has increasingly become overshadowed by Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian violence. 

Nasrallah for the first time confirmed that his combatants were actively fighting in Syria, and said they had been there for several months. He said Hezbollah was not acting out of sectarian motives but to defend Lebanon from radical groups. 

"Syria is no longer a place where there is a popular revolution against a political regime, rather it has become a place for imposing a political plan led by America and the West, and its tools in the region," he said in a speech to mark the 13th anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

Related:

• In Syria, 'winning' is a relative term

• Turkey builds wall at Syrian border after deadly bombings

• Full Syria coverage on NBCNews.com

This story was originally published on Sat May 25, 2013 12:45 PM EDT

ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkey is constructing 1.5-mile twin walls at a border crossing with Syria to increase security at the frontier following three deadly bombings this year.

The concrete walls will be built on either side of the road leading from the Turkish side of the crossing at Cilvegozu to the Syrian border gate and will be topped with barbed wire, the Turkish Customs Ministry said in a statement.

Cilvegozu was the scene of a bombing in February which killed 14 people and this month 51 people died when twin car bombs ripped through the nearby town of Reyhanli.

Since July, Turkish vehicles have not been allowed to cross at the Cilvegozu gate for security reasons, but it has remained open to allow in Syrian refugees and for humanitarian aid from Turkey to be carried across.

Approved Turkish vehicles are currently allowed into the unoccupied buffer area between the Turkish and Syrian gates to unload goods before turning back.

The Bab al-Hawa gate on the Syrian side fell under the control of rebels fighting to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad last year. February's bomb struck inside the buffer area very close to the Turkish gate.

Vehicle screening equipment and x-ray machines as well as wire fencing and extra lighting and security cameras will also be installed, the ministry said.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan will visit Reyhanli on Saturday, the first time since the bombings.

Related stories:

• Analysis: In Syria, 'winning' is a relative term
• Exclusive: Turkish PM Erdogan: Syria has crossed red line, used chemical weapons
• US asks Turkey, Jordan to secure chemical weapons if Syria crisis worsens
• Full Syria coverage on NBCNews.com

Kin Cheung / AP, file

Former South Korean "comfort woman," Kim Bok-dong, 87, front, who was forced to serve for the Japanese Army as a sexual slave during World War II, seen here in April.

TOKYO -- The outspoken mayor of Osaka is under fire not only from the government but from members of his own party for saying that the use of “comfort women,” some of whom were forced into prostitution, during World War II was necessary for the morale of Japanese soldiers.

Toru Hashimoto, co-leader of the Japan Restoration Party, made the comments during a news conference Monday.

“Whether it was of their own volition or against their will, the comfort women system was something necessary,” he said. “For military morale back then, it was probably necessary.”

The comments brought a quick backlash from senior Japanese politicians.

One of the strongest rebuttals came from a top official in Hashimoto’s own party.

“This is not something that’s coming out of our party. I think Mr. Hashimoto was expressing his own private opinions,” said Sakihiti Owaza, a senior official in the Japan Restoration Party. “If these comments continue, we will need to look into his true intentions and put a stop to this.”

Toru Yamanaka / AFP - Getty Images, file

Osaka Mayor and co-leader of the Japan Restoration Party Toru Hashimoto, seen here in 2012.

Yoshihide Suga, chief cabinet secretary in the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, declined to directly criticize Hashimoto; doing so would be considered inappropriate because they are members of different parties.

He said, however, that the government’s position on the matter was clear: "The issue of comfort women is an experience of an unspeakable, painful suffering for which we also feel extreme anguish.”

Cabinet Minister Tomoko Inada did not let the protocols of political politeness stand in her way.

“It might not be appropriate to comment on what has been said by a leader of another party, but I believe the system of comfort women was a tremendous violation of women's human rights,” she said.

Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura said he heard about the comments while on visits to Washington and London and he thought they had been not been “properly understood” by foreign media.

Despite that, given the tensions between Japan and its Pacific neighbors, he said that “the timing of Mr. Hashimoto’s comments couldn’t have been worse.”

“I strongly wonder where there was anything positive in making these comments,” he said.

Hashimoto’s remarks about comfort women represented a break with what has become a Japanese tradition.

In 1994, then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama issued an official apology for Japan's conduct before and during the war, including the treatment of those who came to be known as comfort women. Since then, subsequent administrations have upheld Murayama’s apology.

On Monday, Hashimoto agreed that it was important to accept Japan's role as an aggressor in the war and apologize for its atrocities, but he argued that other countries have had brothels for their troops.

"When a group of men is risking their lives, when this group of men are in a psychologically tense state,  … anyone could understand that they would need something like the comfort women system," he said.

By Tuesday, there was evidence that Hashimoto might be stepping back a bit – but not retreating.

"Just because it was right at the time, obviously you cannot justify it today,” he wrote in a Twitter post.

NBC News’ John Newland contributed to this story.

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A bomb attack on allied forces in Afghanistan on Tuesday marked the first time the Taliban has been able to effectively strike the heavily armored Mastiff personnel carrier, British officials said.

“It’s the first time personnel inside a Mastiff have been killed by an IED [improvised explosive device],” a Ministry of Defense official said.

Based on the Cougar mine-resistant vehicle made by U.S. defense giant General Dynamics, the Mastiff is designed specifically to protect soldiers from improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades, the firm says on its website.

The company says the 21-ton Cougar vehicle has “withstood literally thousands of IED/landmine attacks” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A General Dynamics spokesman in the U.S. declined to comment, saying he would defer to Britain's defense ministry.

The ministry declined to give details of the incident, though it said in a statement that the three British soldiers who were killed were inside the vehicle and that they "received immediate medical attention" and were airlifted to a military hospital "but could not be saved."

Reuters file

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron walks past Mastiff armored vehicles at Camp Bastion, outside Lashkar Gah, in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in December 2012.

Nine Afghans also died in the blast, and six other British soldiers were wounded, according to Reuters. The military has not given specifics about where the Afghans and other soldiers were in relation to the 10-person vehicle.

The attack in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province came just two days after the Taliban announced the start of its annual spring offensive, which it said would be “monumental.”

Gen. Richard Dannatt, former head of the British Army, told BBC's Radio 4 that the incident was a matter of “invention and counter-invention” as the Taliban tries to stay ahead of the armoring technologies of the military.

"The Taliban have found a way of countering the protective qualities and characteristics of the Mastiff,” he told Radio 4.

"It would seem that this was an extremely large bomb that was so powerful that actually it was able to cause fatalities within the vehicle itself. I've not seen a technical report, but my understanding in talking to the Ministry of Defense is that in all probability it was a very large device in terms of the amount of explosive and it may well have physically lifted up the vehicle and possibly even turned it over."

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow

The Taliban took credit for the attack in a statement, adding: "It was a very heavy explosion and we have destroyed their tank."

NP Aerospace, the British company that outfits the Mastiff once it is shipped from the U.S., declined to comment on the vehicle’s capabilities.

“All our sympathy and condolences go to the families and friends of the soldiers tragically killed,” the company said through a spokesman.

The soldiers killed were all from the Royal Highlands Fusiliers, 2^nd Battalion Royal Regiment of Scotland.

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said in an interview with Britain’s Sky News that the incident points to the danger even as British involvement in the war winds down.

“That process of withdrawal in itself is going to be extremely dangerous and will have to be extraordinarily well managed,” Salmond said. “The most dangerous thing in terms of our troops in Afghanistan has been the roadside devices affecting the armored vehicles. The soldiers obviously knew the risk they were running, but that doesn't make it any easier for the families or indeed for the rest of the regiment.”

NBC News' Peter Jeary and Akbar Shinwari contributed to this report.

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