Syria's foreign minister accused the United States and its allies Monday of supporting terrorism in Syria but said his government remains open to a political settlement of its civil war.

Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States "clearly induce and support terrorism in Syria with money, weapons and foreign fighters."

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon called Monday on the Syrian government to show "compassion" to its people in the midst of an increasingly vicious civil war against armed rebels.

Ban said after a meeting with the Syrian foreign minister at U.N. headquarters in New York that it was time for Damascus to lower the scale of its offensive against the insurgency.

The number of Syrians fleeing the conflict in their homeland and seeking refuge in Turkey has climbed close to the 100,000 threshold, Turkish authorities said Monday.

Turkey is currently home to 93,576 refugees housed in several camps in the southeast along the Syrian border, the AFAD disaster agency said in a statement.

The U.S. wants to oust the Damascus regime by raising fears overs its chemical weapons stockpiles, creating a scenario similar to that which led to the invasion of Iraq, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said in an interview broadcast Monday.

"This issue (chemical weapons) is an invention of the American administration," Muallem told Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV in excerpts of an interview to be broadcast in full later Monday.

September was the deadliest month in Iraq in more than two years, with 365 people killed in violence that Iraqi security forces are struggling to curb, official figures released on Monday showed.

Insurgents are regarded as weaker than when violence reached its peak in 2006 and 2007, but they remain capable of carrying out mass-casualty attacks across Iraq.

Army shelling and air raids killed dozens more civilians including children in Syrian flashpoints Monday, activists said, while rebels and loyalists fought close-quarter battles in Aleppo's main souk.

On the political front, Syria accused Washington of seeking to topple the Damascus regime by raising fears over its chemical weapons stockpiles and creating a scenario similar to that which led to the invasion of Iraq.

U.S. Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney attacked President Barack Obama's Middle East policy late Sunday, stepping up the pressure after a wave of anti-U.S. protests in the Islamic world.

In an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal, Romney said of recent "disturbing" developments in the Middle East that the United States "seems to be at the mercy of events rather than shaping them.

A shadowy Islamist group, Al-Nusra Front, said it is holding five Yemeni army officers allegedly sent to Syria to help fight an 18-month uprising, in a video posted on the Internet on Sunday.

The four-minute video posted on jihadist forums shows the men it says are being held in northern Syria.

In just over a century, Chile's Palestinian community has achieved things still not possible at home: a widespread rise to prosperity, elite status and even their own football team.

The summit between South America and Arab nations that starts Monday in Lima will honor the swift, surprising development of the community a long way from its homeland, on South America's Pacific coast.

A suicide car bombing in Qamishli, a Kurdish city in northern Syria, killed at least four people Sunday, state television reported, but a human rights group said that eight members of the security forces died in the blast.

"A suicide terrorist using a car laden with explosives attacked the western district of Qamishli," said the state broadcaster, adding that at least four people were killed.