A U.S. and Russian-inked program to destroy Syria's chemical weapons should begin "in a matter of days," the watchdog tasked with implementing the plan said Monday.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said that its experts "are already at work preparing a roadmap that anticipates the various challenges involved in verifying Syria's declared stockpiles."

President Barack Obama said Monday that a U.S. deal reached with Russia at the weekend had the potential to end the threat of Syria's chemical arsenal.

In his first on-camera response to the breakthrough, Obama cautioned that the deal to identify and destroy the weapons must be properly implemented and that "we are not there yet."

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Monday a U.N. report that proves poison gas killed hundreds in an attack last month in Syria left "no doubt" President Bashar Assad's regime was guilty.

"The content of the report is damning and confirms massive use of sarin gas on August 21," Fabius said on RTL radio.

Bahraini authorities have filed a lawsuit to close a Shiite Muslim clerics' council, accusing it of operating illegally and being involved in politics, the justice ministry said on Monday.

The ministry said it wanted the office of the Olamaa Islamic Council to be closed and its assets liquidated for "functioning outside the law."

Violence in Iraq killed 11 people on Monday as an army official escaped an assassination attempt, the latest in a surge of unrest that left more than 4,200 dead this year.

The attacks were the latest in months of unrelenting bloodshed, the country's worst since 2008.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon on Monday condemned chemical weapon attacks in Syria as a war crime and said U.N. investigators had indisputable evidence of their use.

Ban called on the Security Council to impose "consequences" for any failure by President Bashar Assad to keep to a Russia-U.S. plan to destroy Syria's banned chemical arsenal.

Land confiscated by Israel 35 years ago to build a Jewish settlement in the West Bank will finally be returned to its Palestinians owners, the Israeli military said on Monday.

In 1978 Israel confiscated by military order land belonging to the Palestinian village of Burka in the northern West Bank.

Spanish police on Monday arrested the suspected leader of a cell linked to al-Qaida that sent militants to Syria to carry out suicide bombings, the government said.

Police seized Yassin Ahmed Laarbi in the Spanish territory of Ceuta, which borders Morocco, on terrorism charges, the interior ministry said in a statement.

Syria's Kurds reached an agreement with the main opposition coalition to include more members from the minority in the body, the Kurdish National Council and the opposition said Monday.

The deal reached between the KNC came after months of stalling, as the Syrian National Coalition's general assembly meeting came to a close.

Saudi Arabia's top cleric Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh on Monday condemned violence against non-Muslims living in Islamic countries and attacks on Muslims on the pretext of apostasy.

"Given the dangerous developments in the Muslim world, I would like to warn against the danger of attacking Muslims and those (non-Muslims) under Muslim protection," he said.