The Syrian Prime Minister has visted Aleppo today and pledged €4m in aid to the war torn city.
The visit by Wael al-Halki, who took office after his predecessor Riad Hijab defected earlier this year, may be seen as an attempt to show the Syrian government still has a grasp on the country's's largest city.
Rebels control many districts in Aleppo since launching a campaign this summer.
Most of the countryside surrounding the city is now in the hands of rebels pressing their 21-month-old revolt against Assad.
Civilians in these areas have been facing huge hardship, with a constant shortage of food and fuel.
Rebels and the government have traded blame for the lack of help to opposition-held areas, where clashes rage regularly and the army bombs with artillery and war planes.
Earlier, Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa told a Lebanese newspaper that neither the forces of President Bashar al-Assad nor rebels can win the war in Syria.
Mr Sharaa, a Sunni Muslim in a power structure dominated by Mr Assad's Alawite minority, has rarely appeared in public since the revolt erupted in March 2011.
The al-Akhbar newspaper released only limited excerpts from the interview, and it is far from clear that Mr Sharaa's comments represented the view of the government.
Mr Sharaa is the most prominent figure to say in public that the crackdown will not win.
The paper, which generally takes a pro-Assad line, said Mr Sharaa had been speaking in Damascus.
Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, one of the major powers most insistent that Mr Assad has lost his legitimacy, has said: "I think the end is nearing for Bashar al-Assad."
On the ground, rebels said they were launching an operation to seize the central province of Hama to try to link northern rural areas of Syria under their control to the centre.
In Damascus, activists said fighter jets had bombed the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, killing at least 25 people sheltering in a mosque.
The attack was part of a month-old campaign by Mr Assad's forces to eject rebels from positions they are establishing around the capital's perimeter.
Opposition activists said the deaths in Yarmouk, to which refugees have fled from fighting in nearby suburbs, resulted from a rocket fired from a warplane hitting the mosque.
Elsewhere, An Italian and two other people have been kidnapped in Syria.
Italy's foreign ministry said that it would not provide any details on when the kidnapping took place or on the nationalities of the two other people in order to protect them.
Separately, hundreds of Palestinians refugees living in Syria flooded into Lebanon today after clashes raged between Palestinian factions loyal to and opposed to President Bashar al-Assad in a district of Damascus.
A Reuters witness at the border said they came in buses and cars piled high with belongings.
A Lebanese security source said the refugees from Damascus' Yarmouk Camp suburb had tried to flee yesterday but the road was blocked by fighting.
Syria hosts half a million Palestinian refugees, most living in Yarmouk and descendants of those admitted after the creation of Israel in 1948.
Syria has always cast itself as a champion of the Palestinian struggle, sponsoring several guerrilla factions.
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