Syrian troops shelled a number of districts in Aleppo at dawn on Tuesday and clashed with entrenched rebels, residents told Agence France Presse.

Clashes erupted in Bustan al-Qasr in the southwest and in nearby Izaa as the districts were shelled, the residents said, while also reporting fighting further south in Sukari, where many insurgents were holed up.

Iran is proposing it, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey dispatch observers to its ally Syria in an effort to quell the violence there, state media reported on Tuesday.

Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi put forward the suggestion at a regional "contact group" meeting held in Cairo on Monday, the official news agency IRNA and broadcaster IRIB said.

The Syrian army has tested a chemical weapons delivery system, firing shells at a research center in its northwestern desert region, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported Monday citing "witnesses".

"Five or six empty shells devised for delivering chemical agents were fired by tanks and aircraft, at a site called Diraiham in the desert near the village of Khanasir," east of the city of Aleppo, the periodical reported.

Syrian forces said they had secured a flashpoint district of Aleppo city on Monday after a week of fighting, although an Agence France Presse correspondent said some parts were still unsafe for residents to return.

The district of "Midan is under the control of the army," a military source told AFP, in a report backed up by the correspondent on the ground.

The international peace envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi will travel to Turkey on Tuesday to visit a refugee camp near the Syrian border, a Turkish foreign ministry official told Agence France Presse.

Brahimi, who just spent four days in neighboring Syria, will meet the refugees at the Altinozu camp in Hatay province, the official said Monday on condition of anonymity.

One of three long-term Palestinian hunger strikers in Israeli detention has been moved to a hospital intensive care unit suffering from a drop in blood sugar, a spokeswoman for the Ramallah-based Palestinian Prisoners Club said on Monday.

Amani Sarahna said that Samer Barq, one of three prisoners on hunger strike for weeks to demand their release from detention without trial, was placed in intensive care at Assaf Harofeh medical centre, in central Israel, early on Monday evening.

Gaza's Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya left the coastal strip for neighboring Egypt Monday, after plans for a visit there were postponed twice over the past four days.

Hamas government spokesman Taher al-Nunu told Agence France Presse that Haniya would meet Egyptian premier Hisham Qandil Monday evening for talks "mainly about electricity."

Explosive blasts cut power lines to Iran's underground nuclear facility at Fordo last month, the head of Iran's atomic agency said at a meeting of U.N. atomic watchdog member states Monday.

"On ... 17th August 2012, the electric power lines from the city of Qom to the Fordo complex ... were cut using explosives," Fereydoon Abbasi Davani told the 155-nation International Atomic Energy Agency gathering in a speech.

Libya's interior minister has sacked Benghazi security chiefs after last week's deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in the eastern city, according to official statements seen Monday by AFP.

Deputy Interior Minister for the eastern region, Wanis al-Sharef, and the head of national security for Benghazi, Hussein Bou Hmida, were both replaced, said two separate statements dated September 12, a day after the attack.

Around 100 U.S. citizens have been evacuated from Tunisia since an attack on the embassy in Tunis by angry Muslim protesters that left four people dead, several sources said on Monday.

"The American nationals were evacuated on Sunday," a diplomatic source told AFP, without saying how many had left the country.