Workers at the U.N.'s Palestinian refugee agency in the West Bank have ended a two-month strike over low wages and poor conditions that paralyzed services in camps and shut down schools.

The United Nations has already said the cash-strapped agency was struggling to pay thousands of workers, while the IMF has warned of the danger of rising unemployment in the Palestinian territories if there is no progress in U.S.-backed peace talks.

Attacks in Baghdad and north of the capital killed nine people on Friday, including a supporter of powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who was standing in April's parliamentary election.

The murder of Hamza al-Shammari, the first of an election candidate, comes amid a protracted surge in bloodshed with near-daily attacks nationwide and security forces battling anti-government fighters in Anbar province.

Syria's deputy foreign minister, Faisal Muqdad, said on Friday that Damascus will take part in a second round of peace talks in Geneva due to start on February 10.

"It has been decided that the delegation of the Syrian republic will take part in the second round of negotiations in Geneva," state news agency SANA quoted Muqdad as saying.

Six Egyptian policemen were wounded in a bomb attack in Cairo on Friday, hours before clashes between police and Islamist protesters in several cities killed at least one person, officials said.

The attack shattered a tense calm in the capital after a spate of bombings on January 24 killed six policemen, in an escalation of a militant campaign following the overthrow of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

The Israeli military denied media reports it shot down a rocket fired from Gaza at southern Israel on Thursday, saying the projectile fell on open ground.

"There was no interception," a spokesman told Agence France Presse. "A rocket fell."

A planned international operation to destroy Syria's chemical arsenal at sea will pose no threat to the Mediterranean ecosystem, Greece's foreign minister told an EU conference on Thursday.

"Our concerted diplomatic efforts... have given many institutional and scientific guarantees that there is truly no threat to the marine environment," Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos told the conference on hammering out common strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian region.

A Berber died of his wounds Thursday in Algeria's desert city of Ghardaia, bringing to five the number killed during weeks of violence between two rival communities, local sources said.

The latest death came as the interior minister and police chief visited the city of 90,000 inhabitants, which has been rocked since December by clashes between the Chaamba community of Arab origin and the majority Mozabites, indigenous Berbers belonging to the Ibadi Muslim sect.

An Egyptian appeals court on Thursday ordered the retrial of dozens of defendants including 21 people sentenced to death for a 2012 football stadium riot that killed 74 people, judicial sources said.

The court accepted appeals by 62 defendants against a March ruling by a court that had confirmed death sentences for 21 defendants and handed down jail terms to 24 people, judicial sources said.

The United Nations announced Thursday there would be a "humanitarian pause" in the besieged Syrian city of Homs, allowing civilians to leave, though no immediate movement was expected.

The agreement with Syria's government also clears the way for the delivery of essential lifesaving supplies for about 2,500 civilians, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters, citing comments from Valerie Amos, the U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief.

Syria must move faster to remove its deadly chemical weapons stockpile and meet the June 30 deadline set for destroying its arsenal, the U.N. Security Council demanded Thursday.

The 15 member nations "call upon the Syrian Arab Republic to expedite actions to meet its obligations," the council's president for the month, Lithuania's U.N. ambassador Raimonda Murmokaite, told reporters..