Britain has granted asylum to around 1,500 Syrians fleeing the brutal conflict in the last year, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg revealed Tuesday, as rights groups and even anti-immigration politicians urged action over the refugee crisis.

The British government has defended its policy of focusing on giving aid to help more than 2.35 million refugees caught up in the civil war, rather than offering a comprehensive resettlement program.

A fiery hot air balloon crash in Egypt last year that killed 19 tourists was probably caused by a gas leak, an official Egyptian report released on Tuesday said.

The accident took place on the morning February 26, soon after the balloon lifted off in the southern city of Luxor.

A steady stream of families fleeing fighting in Ramadi and Fallujah is arriving at a checkpoint in Iraq's Karbala province, seeking shelter from the deadly violence.

As militants hold parts of Ramadi and all of Fallujah, in Anbar province, Sunni families are now seeking safety in the Shiite-majority Karbala province, in a country that has been plagued by sharp sectarian divisions.

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.