President Bashar Assad insisted in a meeting Wednesday with visiting U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi that Syrians alone will decide on the fate of an initiative for Geneva peace talks.

The encounter came a day after the Red Crescent evacuated hundreds of civilians from a besieged town near Damascus, in an operation that saw rare cooperation among the regime, its opponents and the international community.

Three suicide bombings killed 14 Iraqi security force members overnight, officials said Wednesday, the deadliest in a series of attacks that left 35 people dead in two days.

The attacks come as Iraq witnesses its worst violence since 2008, a surge in unrest that has killed more than 5,400 people this year that has persisted despite authorities having carried out a swathe of operations and implemented tightened security measures.

Some 500 women, children and elderly civilians trapped in the besieged town of Moadamiyet al-Sham, southwest of Damascus, have been evacuated, activists said.

Supervised by the Red Crescent, the civilians were escorted from the Syrian rebel town on Tuesday, in coordination with the Damascus regime.

A Saudi diplomat involved in a fatal road accident while allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol has left Iran, media reported Wednesday.

"The diplomat left Tehran on September 27 after the end of an examination of his case," the official IRNA news agency quoted an "informed source" as saying, without giving further details.

Egyptian security forces raided an apartment in eastern Cairo early Wednesday, arresting a key Muslim Brotherhood figure who had been on the run since the July coup that ousted the country's Islamist president, the Interior Ministry said.

The arrest of Essam el-Erian, the deputy leader of the Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice party, was the latest in a wide-ranging crackdown and prosecution of both the Islamist group's leaders and its rank-and-file since the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi, who also hails from the Brotherhood.

U.S. lawmakers Tuesday urged the White House to lift its suspension of military aid to Egypt, warning freezing funds and weapons deliveries might unravel decades of cooperation with a key regional ally.

Democratic Representative Eliot Engel, ranking member of the House foreign affairs committee, said he had initially supported a temporary halt to deliveries of F-16 aircraft to the Egyptian military following its ouster of president Mohammed Morsi in July.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Gideon Saar have agreed to build 1,500 new homes in the east Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo, Israeli army radio said Wednesday.

The early-morning report came shortly after Israel freed 26 veteran Palestinian prisoners alongside U.S.-brokered peace talks.

Israel freed another 26 veteran Palestinian prisoners on Wednesday, alongside US-brokered peace talks.

But shortly after they walked free in a gesture meant to ease the talks' progress, Israeli army radio reported government plans to boost settlement in annexed east Jerusalem.

Israel defended its record before the U.N. Human Rights Council Tuesday, marking an end to its 18-month boycott of the body over scrutiny of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.

"Our record is before you. It is not a perfect record," Israeli ambassador Eviator Manor told the council.

Yemeni authorities arrested on Tuesday "one of the most dangerous" al-Qaida militants in the country's southeast, state news agency Saba reported.

"The arrested terrorist Omar Salem is involved in the assassination of the deputy head of the military college General Ali bin Freyjan" who was killed earlier this month, Saba quoted a military official as saying.