Mortar Attacks Shake Damascus as Envoys Issue Warnings BEIRUT, Lebanon - Disjointed diplomatic maneuvering on the Syria crisis by top foreign officials seemed to underscore the lack of any coherent international effort to end the fighting, even as more rebel attacks rocked Damascus on Wednesday. Four consecutive explosions, claimed by the Free Syrian Army, shook regime strongholds in the capital in what was seen as a significant escalation. The Houran Freemen Brigade claimed responsibility for mortar attacks that targeted Mezze 86, a Damascus neighborhood near the official palace that houses the offices of President Bashar al-Assad. The Mezze military airfield and the prime minister's administrative complex also were hit. Activists said the palace remained intact, because of mistakes in coordinating the attack, and that Mezze 86 was hit instead by mistake. ts. Mezze 86, a hilltop district mostly populated by members of Mr. Assad's minority Alawite sect, had also been targeted on Tuesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain with contacts inside Syria, reported on Wednesday that three civilians were killed and more the two dozen wounded by shelling in the Hajar al-Aswad district in the Damascus suburbs where clashes have been raging between rebel fighters and regime forces helped by fighters from pro-regime Palestinian groups. Two rebel fighters also were killed, the Observatory said. "The situation inside Syria is turning grimmer every day, and the risk is growing that this crisis could explode outward into an already volatile region," Jeffrey D. Feltman, the United Nations under secretary general for political affairs, told a meeting of the Security Council on Tuesday. Underscoring that threat, Israel accused Syria of moving tanks into a demilitarized zone of the disputed Golan Heights region captured by the Israelis in the 1967 war and asked the Security Council to address "this alarming development." Mr. Feltman, who answered questions from reporters at the United Nations, said he was concerned about the new Golan tension and called it "another example of spillover from areas that had been previously immune from fighting." Mr. Feltman also quoted activists as saying that 250 people had died across Syria on Monday. "We continue to hope that the Security Council can come together and act in a unified fashion on Syria, as this would be critical to any peace effort," he said. There was no sign of that. The Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, held talks in Jordan with the highest-ranking defector from the Syrian government, former Prime Minister Riad Hijab, who attacked Moscow's enduring support for President Bashar al-Assad as unworkable for a political transition. Remarks by David Cameron, the British prime minister, that Mr. Assad might be granted safe passage out of his country as a means to end the fighting also caused a stir, with his office quickly stressing that he did not mean Mr. Assad should avoid prosecution. Lakhdar Brahimi, the international envoy to the conflict, warned that unless there was a greater international effort, Syria risked descending into becoming another Somalia - which as a failed state became a font of international piracy and other terrorist problems for 20 years. In an interview with the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat, Mr. Brahimi said the main effort should be a binding Security Council resolution on a political transition. In Damascus, gunmen assassinated the brother of the Syrian Parliament speaker in broad daylight on Tuesday in a central neighborhood, the official Syrian news agency SANA reported. The victim, Mohammad Osama al-Laham, was felled by bullets fired into his car in the Midan neighborhood while en route to work, SANA said. The agency attributed the attack to terrorists, the government's standard description for the opposition, and said the motive was to deprive Syria of skilled loyalists needed in the country. Mr. Laham, the brother of Jihad Laham, the speaker of the People's Assembly, held a doctorate in agriculture. The assassination came one day after the funeral of Mohamed Rafeh, 30, a television star who was abducted and killed, apparently by government opponents, over the weekend. Mr. Rafeh had been outspoken in his support for the fierce government suppression of armed opponents. An online statement from a rebel faction called him an informant. Reporting was contributed by Hania Mourtada from Beirut, Lebanon, Rick Gladstone from New York and Hwaida Saad from Antakya, Turkey.