The military chief of Syria's victorious Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham said on Tuesday it would be "the first" to dissolve its armed wing and integrate into the armed forces.

"In any state, all military units must be integrated into this institution," Murhaf Abu Qasra, known by his nom de guerre Abu Hassan al-Hamawi, said in an interview with AFP, adding that "we will be, God willing, among the first to take the initiative (to dissolve our armed wing)".

Syria's conflict has not ended even after the departure of Bashar al-Assad, the UN's envoy to the country warned Tuesday, as the Security Council called for an "inclusive" political transition.

Geir Pedersen, the UN's special envoy for Syria, also called at the Security Council for Israel to "cease all settlement activity in the occupied Syrian Golan" and said an end to sanctions would be key to assisting Syria.

Syria's "conflict has not ended yet," even after the departure of former president Bashar al-Assad, the UN's envoy to the country warned Tuesday, highlighting clashes between Turkish-backed and Kurdish groups in the north.

"There have been significant hostilities in the last two weeks, before a ceasefire was brokered... A five-day ceasefire has now expired and I am seriously concerned about reports of military escalation," said Geir Pedersen, the UN's special envoy for Syria.

"Such an escalation could be catastrophic."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a security briefing Tuesday atop a strategic Syrian mountain inside the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights that Israel seized this month, the defence minister said.

Netanyahu, Defence Minister Israel Katz and the heads of the armed forces and the domestic security agency visited "outposts at the summit of Mount Hermon for the first time since they were seized by the military", Katz's office said.

Iran's supreme leader said Tuesday that Israel and the United States were "completely wrong" to imagine the Tehran-backed axis of resistance had collapsed with the ouster of Syria's longtime strongman.

"With the developments in Syria and the crimes the Zionist regime is committing and the crimes that America is committing, and the help that some others are giving to them, they thought that the resistance was over," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a televised speech.

"They are completely wrong."

The United Nations said Tuesday it expects around one million people to return to Syria in the first half of 2025, following the collapse of president Bashar al-Assad's rule.

Assad fled Syria just over a week ago, as his forces abandoned tanks and other equipment in the face of a lightning offensive spearheaded by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), ending five decades of repressive rule by Assad's family.

A UN envoy has warned that Syria's protracted conflict "has not ended yet", even as victorious Islamist-led rebels stepped up contacts with governments that deemed ousted president Bashar al-Assad a pariah.

Assad fled Syria just over a week ago following a lightning offensive spearheaded by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), more than 13 years after his crackdown on democracy protests precipitated one of the deadliest wars of the century.

In a war-ravaged Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, Radwan Adwan was stacking stones to rebuild his father's grave, finally able to return to Yarmuk cemetery after Bashar al-Assad's fall.

"Without the fall of the regime, it would have been impossible to see my father's grave again," said 45-year-old Adwan.

"When we arrived, there was no trace of the grave."

It was his first visit there since 2018, when access to the cemetery south of Damascus was officially banned.

After backing the rebels who overthrew Bashar al-Assad and brokering a key Horn of Africa peace deal, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan has boosted his international standing, leaving him well-placed to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, analysts say.

Although Turkey was not directly involved in the Syrian strongman's overthrow, it has long maintained a working relationship with the Islamist-led HTS rebels behind the push, leaving it with a direct line to Damascus as other governments fret over the group's Al-Qaeda roots.

Vegetation grows between crumbled walls and torn asphalt, and not a single street remains intact in Syria's Maaret al-Numan, a key war battleground town being brought back to life by returnees.

Bilal al-Rihani reopened his pastry shop in the western town this week with his wife and 14-year-old son.

The 45-year-old baker couldn't stay away after years of exile, even amid the devastation surrounding him.

Working without water or electricity, the shop bustles with customers as they prepare cinnamon pastries -– a family speciality for 150 years.