Easing pressure on Iran over its nuclear program at this stage would be a "historic mistake," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

"It would be a historic mistake to ease the pressure on Iran a moment before the sanctions achieve their objective," he said at the opening of the Israeli parliament's winter session.

The Israeli intelligence minister called on the major powers on Monday to maintain pressure on Iran, saying that was what was driving it to seek a deal in nuclear talks.

Yuval Steinitz, who is also minister for international relations, was speaking on the eve of revived negotiations on Tehran's controversial nuclear program between Iranian officials and the P5+1 group of Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany.

Syria's President Bashar Assad has jokingly said that he should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Monday.

The prize, which was given to the global chemical weapons watchdog on Friday, "should have been mine", Assad said, according to Al-Akhbar newspaper.

The Syrian conflict is "devastating" the lives of Palestinian refugees in the country, a U.N. agency said Monday, after weekend shelling of a Palestinian camp in the southern province of Daraa.

"Initial reports indicate the (Daraa) Palestine refugee camp was directly affected by intensive armed conflict on October 12, 2013, alleging that seven Palestine refugees were killed and 15 others injured," said the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday it was "urgent" to set a date for the so-called Geneva 2 meeting on the future of Syria but that peace was impossible until President Bashar Assad was replaced.

After talks with U.N. special representative Lakhdar Brahimi in London, Kerry said "we believe that it is urgent to set a date to convene the conference and work toward a new Syria".

Swiss radiation experts have confirmed they found traces of polonium on clothing used by Yasser Arafat which "support the possibility" the veteran Palestinian leader was poisoned.

In a report published by The Lancet at the weekend, the team provide scientific details to media statements made in 2012 that they had found polonium on Arafat's belongings.

Shaqlawa Mohammed Rashid sits at the entrance of a white tent in a refugee camp in northern Iraq, reflecting on what will be her first Eid al-Adha holiday outside Syria.

The 16-year-old girl smiles at her mother Barshan, who sits next to her on a dusty carpet with a cloth covering half her face to shield it from the sun and dust, and whispers comfortingly: "Our situation here is temporary."

Russia on Monday urged the United States to do everything in its power to bring the Syrian opposition to peace talks after a key group said it would not attend a proposed conference in Geneva.

"We very much expect our American partners and other countries, which not only have influence on various opposition groups but also ... encourage these opposition groups to continue fighting, to realize their responsibility for creating conditions for performing their share of the work for convening Geneva 2," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

At least 27 people, including three children, were killed Monday when a car bomb exploded in the town of Darkush in northwestern Syria, near the Turkish border, an NGO said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which had earlier reported a toll of 20, said the number of casualties was expected to rise due to the large number of people who suffered serious injuries.

Jihadists in Syria were behind the kidnapping of seven aid workers in the northwest of the country, a monitoring group said Monday, shortly after four of them were freed.

"The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has freed... International Committee of the Red Cross workers they abducted yesterday on the road linking Saraqeb and Sirmin" in Idlib province, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.