Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called on Monday for quick progress in resolving the conflict in Syria during talks with UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, a statement from his office said.

Maliki reiterated calls for a "political solution" to the 19-month uprising, during the Baghdad meeting with veteran troubleshooter Brahimi.

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is considering proposing the deployment of peacekeepers to Syria if a deal on a transition is reached, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council said on Monday.

One of Brahimi's ideas "is considering the deployment of peacekeeping forces which would accompany any political proposal," the head of the SNC's media office Ahmed Ramadan told Agence France Presse in Doha as the exiled opposition group began a meeting in the Qatari capital.

A Sanaa court specializing in terrorism sentenced six Yemenis to between one and five years in prison on Monday for "belonging to al-Qaida" and plotting attacks in Yemen.

The court acquitted six others accused in connection with the same case for the lack of evidence against them, according to the verdict read by judge Hilal Mhaffal.

Clashes between Syrian troops and rebel fighters inside and outside the Umayyad Mosque in second city Aleppo have damaged the 13th century landmark, an AFP correspondent reported on Monday.

Fire has destroyed some of the antique carpets and wooden furnishings that used to adorn the place of worship and charred one of its intricately sculpted colonnades.

Portraits of toppled Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi may no longer adorn the walls of Tripoli University, but it is likely to be a long time before new values and higher standards become entrenched there.

The signature red, black and green of the 2011 revolt that put an end to 42 years of stifling dictatorship now decorate the corridors. And inside the classrooms, things are also beginning to look a little different.

Human Rights Watch urged Tunisia on Monday to probe a wave of attacks by radical Islamists in recent months and hold those responsible to account, warning that failure to do so strengthens their impunity.

"Tunisian authorities should investigate a series of attacks by religious extremists over the past 10 months and bring those responsible to justice," the New York-based rights group said in a statement.

The majority of weapons secretly shipped to Syria at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar go to hardline Islamic rebel groups rather than more secular organizations favored by the West, The New York Times reported Monday.

Citing unnamed officials, the newspaper said this was the conclusion reached in classified reports presented to President Barack Obama and other senior officials.

An Armenian plane ordered to land in Turkey Monday for security checks while en route to Syria's battered second city of Aleppo was allowed to resume its flight Monday after nothing suspicious was found, Anatolia news agency said.

"We know a plane from Armenia was forced to land in (eastern) Erzurum city... but it was allowed to resume its journey," the state news agency quoted Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc as saying.

The European Union slapped fresh sanctions against President Bashar Assad's regime Monday, agreeing an assets freeze and travel ban on 28 Syrians and two firms at a meeting of EU foreign ministers.

This 19th round of sanctions since the start of the Syrian conflict in March last year brings to 181 the number of people and to 54 the number of companies blacklisted by the EU.

The number of Syrians fleeing the conflict in their homeland and seeking refuge in Turkey now exceeds 100,000, a Turkish disaster agency said on Monday.

Turkey is home to 100,363 refugees housed in several camps in the southeast along the Syrian border, the AFAD disaster agency said in a statement.