The first ship carrying Syrian chemical materials left port of Latakia Tuesday under a deal to rid the country of its chemical arsenal, said the joint mission overseeing the disarmament.

Meanwhile, the head of al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate, the Al-Nusra Front, called for an end to four days of clashes between rebels and the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) that has killed at least 274 people.

The trial of a British man held in Morocco on charges of raping a young girl has been adjourned until next month, a rights activist who attended Tuesday's court hearing told Agence France Presse.

Robert Bill, 59, who did not attend the hearing in the northern town of Tetouan, is accused of kidnapping two Moroccan girls and raping another.

The chief of Syria's Al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaida affiliate, called Tuesday for an end to fighting between rebel groups and the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

The message came as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said at least 274 people had been killed in the clashes that erupted last Friday.

Palestinians beat and detained several Israeli settlers who had sparked clashes after entering Qusra village near the West Bank city of Nablus Tuesday, sources on both sides said.

At one point, Israeli soldiers were negotiating the release of some 13 settlers from a house in the village where they were being held, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

Thousands of Syrians fleeing civil war or planning to stock up on supplies crossed into northern Iraq at the weekend after Iraqi Kurdish authorities reopened a long-closed border, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday.

On Sunday afternoon, authorities reopened the Peshkhabour border at the Tigris River, which had been closed since mid-September, allowing 2,519 Syrians to cross into the country by barge, UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told reporters in Geneva.

Thousands of African asylum seekers demonstrated in Tel Aviv on Tuesday for a third straight day of protests against Israel's immigration policies.

Migrants, most of them fleeing Eritrea or Sudan, held banners that read "We are refugees," and "No more prison," as they marched on Western embassies and the offices of the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR).

At least 274 people have been killed in four days in Syria since the outbreak of fighting between rebels and jihadists, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday.

The NGO said 129 fighters from moderate and Islamist rebel groups had been killed in the clashes since Friday, along with 99 members of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and 46 civilians.

Iraqi troops failed to recapture jihadist-held areas of Anbar provincial capital Ramadi in a night-time assault that left four civilians dead, medical and security officials said on Tuesday.

Fighters loyal to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were still in control of the south of the city, west of Baghdad, after fighting off the assault, police said.

Gunmen killed a police officer in Yemen's main southern city Aden on Tuesday, shortly after a bomb seriously wounded an intelligence officer, security officials said.

"Unknown gunmen in a vehicle opened fire on a police patrol car in the (central) Dreen district, killing Lieutenant Mubarak al-Ashram and wounding another officer," a police official told AFP.

A U.N.-hosted peace conference on Syria must work to remove President Bashar Assad from power because of his culpability for tens of thousands of deaths, Turkey's Prime Minster said in Tokyo on Tuesday.

"In Geneva 2, we must make sure that... all the measures will not fail...so that we can (bring) in an era without Bashar Assad," he said, referring to peace talks planned later this month in Switzerland.