A Syrian refugee gave birth at sea on her way to Italy as the number of arrivals fleeing the war-torn country this year rose to nearly 3,000 people, officials said.

The woman was one of 355 refugees -- most of them from Syria -- on two boats intercepted by coast guard and navy vessels and escorted to Sicily on Wednesday.

Rebel fighters said they fired Katyusha rockets at government positions in central Damascus on Wednesday in retaliation for alleged chemical weapons attacks by Syrian regime forces against civilians.

The claim came as Western powers readied for military action against President Bashar Assad's regime for suspected chemical attacks that are said to have killed hundreds on the Syrian capital's outskirts last week.

Any military intervention by the United States against Tehran's ally Syria will spell "disaster" for the region, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Wednesday.

"The U.S. intervention will be a disaster for the region," Khamenei, the Islamic republic's most powerful authority, told a meeting with the cabinet of President Hassan Rowhani, state television reported.

U.N. inspectors on Wednesday inspected a second site on the outskirts of the Syrian capital suspected of being hit by a deadly chemical weapons attack last week, opposition activists said.

An Agence France Presse cameraman filmed the team of arms experts as they set off from the Four Seasons hotel in Damascus in a convoy of six U.N.-marked jeeps, a day after their work was suspended over safety concerns.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal met Wednesday for talks on Syria with his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu, as the West weighs possible military strikes against Damascus.

The ministers discussed "developments on the Syrian arena," state news agency SPA reported, without giving further details.

Russia evacuated 116 Russian citizens and nationals of other ex-Soviet states on two planes belonging to the emergencies ministry which flew them from the Syrian port city of Latakia, the ministry said Wednesday.

The first plane, an Ilyushin-76 cargo plane, brought back 89 people wanting to leave the conflict-torn country and landed at Moscow's Domodedovo airport late on Tuesday.

Syria's envoy to the United Nations on Wednesday accused rebel forces of using chemical weapons to prompt foreign powers to take military action against the government.

"Many facts tend to prove the innocence of the Syrian government, which has been subject to false accusations," ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari told state media.

Yemen is doing all that it can to secure the release of an Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Sanaa last month, said Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kurbi.

The authorities were "exerting all efforts" to free the official, Kurbi was quoted as saying by state news agency Saba after holding talks late Tuesday with an Iranian foreign ministry delegation in the Yemeni capital.

British Prime Minister David Cameron's office said Wednesday that he and U.S. President Barack Obama had no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime had used chemical weapons against its own people.

"Both leaders agreed that all the information available confirmed a chemical weapons attack had taken place, noting that even the Iranian President and Syrian regime had conceded this," Downing Street said after the two leaders spoke on the phone Tuesday night.

More than a dozen bombings ripped through Shiite neighborhoods in and around Baghdad, the bloodiest in a wave of attacks Wednesday that killed 49 people across Iraq amid spiraling violence.

The worst of the bloodshed struck the capital and surrounding areas in the form of a spate of apparently coordinated car bombs and suicide attacks targeting morning rush hour, leaving more than 150 people wounded.