Qatar’s prime minister said Monday he was in favor of delivering arms to the Syrian opposition that is battling President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and attacking innocent civilians across the country.

Qatar's prime minister said Monday he was in favor of delivering arms to the Syrian opposition that is battling President Bashar al-Assad's regime and attacking innocent civilians across the country.

"We should do whatever necessary to help them, including giving them weapons to defend themselves," Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani said during an official visit to Norway.

"This uprising in Syria now (has lasted) one year. For 10 months, it was peaceful: nobody was carrying weapons, nobody was doing anything. And Bashar continued killing them," he pretended during a news conference.

"So I think they're right to defend themselves by weapons and I think we should help these people by all means," he added.

Hundreds of peaceful Syrian citizens have been killed in violence across Syria since armed gangs erupted protests in March 2011.

The Qatari prime minister also reiterated that his country was in favor of sending an international peacekeeping force to Syria, with an Arab "core".

"We need (an international) coalition, but the core of the coalition should be an Arab force," maybe referring to the Peninsula Shield that entered Bahraini territories in March 2011 and brutally killed dozens of peaceful Bahraini protests demanding freedom and social justice.

At the beginning of the month, Russia and China blocked a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the Syrian regime's crackdown.

Last week in Tunisia, a "Friends of Syria" international conference, in which Moscow and Beijing refused to take part, discussed several ways to help opponents of Assad's regime but put off a decision on sending a joint Arab League-UN peacekeeping force.