EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Wednesday she was cautiously optimistic over the outcome of talks this week between Iran and world powers on Tehran's nuclear drive.

Officials from the so-called P5+1 grouping meet negotiators from Iran in Kazakhstan on Friday, hoping for a response to a revised offer that would ease some sanctions in return for concessions over its uranium enrichment activities.

A Turkish ship sank off Oman on Wednesday a day after an engine room fire and the evacuation of its 21-strong crew, Oman's transport ministry said.

The sultanate's official ONA news agency cited a ministry statement as saying that the Atlantik Confidence, flying the Liberian flag, sank at midday 144 nautical miles southeast of the island of Masirah, off the country's east coast.

Turkey said Wednesday it has set up a consultative body of "wise people" to help shape public opinion on the latest peace process with Kurdish rebels.

The initiative -- which involves an array of figures including popular actors and singers -- follows a ceasefire call last month by jailed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Syrian President Bashar Assad accused Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of not having said "a single word of truth" about Syria's conflict, in an interview with Turkish media posted on the web.

"Erdogan has not said a single word of truth since the beginning of the crisis in Syria," Assad told journalists working for Turkish television Ulusal and Aydinlik newspaper.

For millions of Syrians displaced by fighting, every day is a struggle to survive, and for those in Kherbet al-Khaldiye, that means eating and drinking whatever they can forage.

"We eat herbs and collect stagnant rainwater to drink and wash in," says 24-year-old Hisham, his head covered in a red and white chequered keffiyeh scarf.

Turkish and Israeli officials will meet on April 12 for breakthrough talks over compensation for a deadly 2010 flotilla raid, for which the Jewish state apologized last week, the Turkish prime minister said Friday.

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc had initially said the negotiations for compensation of the victims' families would start next week, in remarks carried by the private NTV broadcaster.

A mortar attack that killed 15 students at Damascus University marks a rebel escalation in the Syrian capital ordered by foreign governments, Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi said on Friday.

"The terrorists' mortar attacks on residential areas, schools, universities and hospitals is the result of foreign orders to stage a full-scale escalation," Zohbi told state news agency SANA.

The U.N. refugee agency sounded the alarm Thursday over reports that Turkey deported Syrians after clashes in a camp where they had sought refuge, but Ankara rejected claims they were forced back to the war-ravaged country.

On Wednesday, police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse Syrians protesting after a fire in the camp -- which houses some 25,000 refugees -- killed a child and injured three other people, Turkey's Anatolia news agency reported.

Turkish forces fired artillery shells into north Iraq, apparently in a bid to intimidate Kurdish rebels with whom Ankara is in peace talks, security sources and rebels told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

The shelling on Wednesday, which caused no casualties, came days after jailed Kurdish rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan made a ceasefire call in a move that raised hopes of an end to a three-decade conflict that has cost some 45,000 lives, most of them Kurdish.

Amnesty International criticized Wednesday European Union hopeful Turkey's dismal record on freedom of expression and called for legislative reforms to bring "abuses to an end."

"Freedom of expression is under attack in Turkey," the London-based group said.