A new round of Syrian peace talks got off to a rocky start Monday, with the warring sides blaming each other for escalating violence and difficulties getting aid to the besieged city of Homs.

The U.N. and Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi began the latest session in Geneva by shuttling between the government and opposition teams, which continued to lob blame back and forth as they did throughout the first round of talks in late January.

A third shipment of chemical weapons material left Syria on Monday under a deal to rid the country of its arsenal by mid-2014, the mission overseeing the operation said.

The joint United Nations-Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) mission did not give details about the shipment but said it left on a Norwegian cargo vessel, escorted by ships from four countries.

Some 300 people were evacuated Monday from army-besieged districts of Syria's Homs amid a four-day "humanitarian pause" that had earlier been marred by deadly attacks.

The latest evacuations bring the total number of civilians given safe passage out of the war-ravaged central part of the city up to some 1,000 since Friday.

Iraq's parliament speaker narrowly escaped an attack in his hometown on Monday while 21 militants died when a car bomb they were readying mistakenly went off in renewed nationwide violence.

The unrest comes amid the worst protracted period of bloodshed in nearly six years, with more than 1,000 people killed last month as security forces grapple with near-daily attacks and battles with anti-government fighters in Anbar province.

A presidential panel has agreed to transform Yemen into a six-region federation as part of its political transition, state news agency Saba announced Monday.

"The final approval" on creating a "federal state of six regions" came at a meeting of the committee, headed by President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi and including representatives of Yemen's main parties, Saba said.

Negotiators are close to striking a long-awaited deal on compensation for Turkish victims of a deadly Israeli raid on a Gaza aid flotilla four years ago, a Turkish official said Monday.

The May 2010 Israeli assault on the Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara while it was in international waters sent relations between Israel and Turkey to an all-time low.

Opposition fighters from Islamist brigades have killed at least 21 civilians and 20 pro-regime fighters in an Alawite village in Syria's Hama province, an NGO said on Monday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said fighters from Islamist brigades including Jund al-Aqsa were behind the deaths in Maan village, in central Syria, on Sunday.

Human Rights Watch on Monday called on Morocco and Spain to end the abusive treatment of sub-Saharan immigrants, after nine migrants drowned trying to reach the Spanish territory of Ceuta.

Morocco has struggled to cope with a rising tide of sub-Saharan Africans heading to its northern shores in their desperate quest to cross the Mediterranean, and its security forces have increasingly come under fire for beating, arbitrarily detaining and deporting illegal immigrants.

The jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant withdrew from the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor on Monday after a three-day battle with Islamist rebels, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said ISIL withdrew from the province, which borders Iraq, after fighting a coalition of opposition brigades including al-Qaida's Syria affiliate Al-Nusra Front.

Suspected Jewish extremists punctured the tires of more than a dozen Palestinian-owned vehicles in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and sprayed a racist slogan, police said on Monday.

Spokeswoman Luba Samri said the incident occurred in Ein Aluza, near Silwan which lies just south of the Old City.