Suspected militants blew up a pipeline in Egypt's Sinai that transports gas to Jordan late Monday in the third such attack in less than a month, security officials said.

The officials said there were no immediate reports of injuries, but witnesses said thick flames rose into the sky from the spot where the pipeline was struck.

A specially-equipped U.S. naval ship departed for Italy on Monday on a ground-breaking mission to destroy Syria's most dangerous chemical agents, Pentagon officials said.

After setting off from the port of Norfolk on the Virginia coast at 7:30 pm EST (00:30 GMT Tuesday), the MV Cape Ray is due to arrive in the southern port of Gioia Tauro in about "two to three weeks," spokesman Colonel Steven Warren told reporters.

U.S. officials on Monday deflected questions about plans for Egypt's army chief to run for the presidency, but stressed it was important to maintain "checks and balances" between the military and government.

"Only the people of Egypt can take the next steps in their transition," said White House spokesman Jay Carney as the Egyptian military backed its commander General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to stand in presidential elections slated for mid-April.

The U.N.'s Western Sahara envoy met Morocco's foreign minister Monday, official media reported, during a new tour of the region to push for a peaceful resolution to the frozen conflict.

Christopher Ross was received by Salaheddine Mezouar and his deputy Mbarka Bouaida, Morocco's MAP new agency said, without giving further details of the meeting.

A Dutch Roman Catholic priest has launched a desperate YouTube appeal for help for Homs, describing conditions in the besieged Syrian city as "unbearable" with people starving and in need of medicine.

"The biggest problem is hunger because people can't find anything to eat," said Father Frans van der Lugt, whose identity was confirmed to Agence France Presse by the Jesuits from the Netherlands and Flanders association.

Syrian authorities on Monday postponed for the sixth time the trial of activist Mazen Darwish and his colleagues arrested a year ago, a Syrian media rights group said.

Journalist Darwish, Hussein Ghreir and Hani Zaitani were arrested in a raid on the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) where they work, in February 2012.

A series of attacks in Baghdad and Sunni Arab areas north of the capital killed nine people on Monday, as Iraq grapples with a months-long surge in nationwide violence.

Coupled with a protracted stand-off between security forces and anti-government fighters in the western province of Anbar, unrest this month has left more than 850 people dead, fueling fears Iraq is slipping back into the brutal conflict that plagued it in 2006-2007.

Libya's prime minister said Monday five Egyptian diplomats kidnapped in Tripoli and freed as part of an apparent prisoner swap will return to their homeland "in a few hours".

Kidnappers snatched four Egyptian diplomats in Tripoli on Saturday, the day after another member of the embassy in the city was taken.

A second shipment of chemical weapons materials has been removed from Syria under a deal to eliminate its arsenal, the joint U.N. mission overseeing the disarmament said Monday.

"Today, a further shipment of chemical weapons materials took place from the Syrian Arab Republic," the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said in a statement.

Conflicting reports emerged Monday about an alleged Israeli airstrike on Russian-made missiles in the Syrian port city of Latakia, amid official Syrian and Israeli silence over the unconfirmed news.

The pro-Damascus Russia Today television quoted Latakia residents as saying that they did not hear any blasts overnight and that the powerful S-300 missiles in question would have produced extremely loud explosions had they been targeted in an alleged raid.