U.S. efforts to forge an international coalition to support a military strike on Syria faced fresh uncertainty Thursday, as British Prime Minister David Cameron confronted a political fight in Parliament over military action and France called for a delay until U.N. inspectors finish their work on the ground.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Cameron pledged that Britain would take no action until the United Nations had reviewed a report from weapons inspectors, who are in Syria examining the sites of an alleged chemical attack last week that left hundreds dead.

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Russia and Iran have given fresh warning to the United States and its allies against a military intervention in Syria.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that such an intervention could have “catastrophic consequences for the region and called on the international community to show “prudence” over the crisis.

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A White House official says the U.S. has a “range of options” if it decides to act against Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons.

The official commented on Saturday as President Barack Obama met with his top national security advisers to discuss the Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical weapons on civilians in a Damascus suburb.

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Israeli jets raided a Palestinian militant base fifteen kilometres south of Beirut early on Friday, a Lebanese police source said, a day after rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel.

The source said the raid targeted a base of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, (PFLP-GC), headed by Ahmed Jebril, in the area of Naamieh, south of the capital.

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In what the opposition called the worst atrocity of Syria’s civil war, antigovernment activists accused the government of killing hundreds of civilians, including many women and children, in a poison-gas attack targeting pro-rebel Damascus suburbs.

The Syrian government called reports of a massacre untrue, but the scale of the alleged carnage and the graphic videos of the dead and injured that surfaced Wednesday left many officials across the globe demanding action.

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