A European Parliament debate Wednesday on Switzerland's controversial decision to curb immigration erupted into a barrage of bitter exchanges and insults between right and left-wing lawmakers.

Brandishing a Swiss flag, Italian deputy Mario Borghezio, a member of the populist, anti-immigration Northern League, interrupted the debate by shouting: "Yes to the referendum! Yes to the people's freedom!

German Chancellor Angela Merkel foresees "considerable problems" after voters in Switzerland opted to impose limits on immigration from the European Union, her spokesman said Monday.

"The government takes note of the result of this referendum and respects it," Steffen Seibert told reporters when asked to respond to Sunday's vote that was pushed by Swiss right-wing populists.

The leader of Britain's main euroskeptic party hailed "wise" Swiss voters Sunday for backing curbs on EU immigration, saying it would encourage others across the continent.

Nigel Farage, the head of the UK Independence Party, said Switzerland had stood up to "bullying" from Brussels and that it was "not a matter of race but of space."

Switzerland voted Sunday to impose curbs on immigration by European Union citizens, in a nail-bitingly close referendum that threatened to ignite a row with Brussels.

Final results showed that 50.3 percent of voters had backed the "Stop Mass Immigration" proposal pushed by right-wing populists, even though it could mean the demise of a raft of deals signed in 1999 with the EU including on the economic front.

A Vietnamese diplomat who was posted at the country's consulate in Geneva said he has sought political asylum in Switzerland.

Dang Xuong Hung, who served at consulate from 2008 to 2012, when he formally withdrew from the Vietnamese Communist Party, told local Geneva station Leman Bleu on Sunday that he had applied for Swiss asylum last October.

Nearly 1,900 people have been killed in Syria since peace talks opened in Switzerland on January 22, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.

The group said at least 498 civilians were among those killed in Syria since the government and opposition joined peace talks that were due to wrap up later Friday, having produced no signs of progress.

Crying with grief and anger, Fatima Khan stormed forward and shouted: "You killed my son!"

As Syria's warring sides held a sixth day of U.N.-brokered peace talks in Geneva, the mother of a British doctor who died in the custody of President Bashar Assad's regime confronted his aides Thursday.

A plan by Swiss right-wing populists to reimpose immigration quotas for EU citizens has won support ahead of a referendum, raising the prospect of a clash with Brussels, a poll showed Wednesday.

A total of 43 percent of those surveyed said they backed the "Stop Mass Immigration" measure which goes to a vote on February 9, according to the survey released by public broadcaster SRG.

A 40-year-old Swiss mother who was being hunted by police killed her 10-month-old baby boy by cutting his throat after being caught and arrested in Spain, police and newspaper reports said Thursday.

Spanish police detained the woman on an international arrest warrant on Wednesday in a Carrefour supermarket in the southeastern seaside city of Torrevieja and took her and her baby to hospital so the child could be treated for water on the brain, leading daily El Pais said.

Pope Francis prayed Wednesday for a Switzerland peace conference on the Syrian crisis to end in reconciliation, calling on the warring sides to resolve a conflict estimated to have killed more than 130,000 people.

The pontiff called on all parties to "spare no effort in urgently ending violence and a conflict which has already caused too much suffering".