The U.S. government on Tuesday brushed aside a report of a leaked State Department cable indicating that Syria had used chemical weapons in its brutal crackdown on a nearly two-year-old rebellion.

Foreign Policy, an online magazine, said it had acquired a leaked State Department report by U.S. diplomats in Turkey that made a "compelling case" that President Bashar Assad's forces had used poison gas.

Some 670 Syrian students at British universities risk being expelled because they can no longer meet their fees due to the conflict back home, campaign organizers claimed Tuesday.

The collapse of the Syrian currency, the closure of the embassy in Britain, sanctions on Syrian banks and the Syrian higher education ministry stopping funding have made it hard for students to finance their tuition.

A United Arab Emirates court sentenced an Emirati national married to an Iranian woman to seven years in jail on Tuesday after convicting him of spying, the official WAM news agency reported.

Salem Musa Fairuz Khamis was convicted of "having contact with a foreign country" at the Supreme Federal Court, the UAE's highest court, WAM said.

The United States on Tuesday condemned vitriolic anti-Semitic remarks attributed to Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi before he was elected to office, and urged him to make clear his views.

"The language that we've seen is deeply offensive," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, adding "we think that these comments should be repudiated, and they should be repudiated firmly."

Turkish military planes struck rebel targets in northern Iraq in a bid to rout separatists from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), security sources said Tuesday.

"A total of 18 targets were fired at on Monday in the northern Iraqi regions of Zap and Metina" in Iraqi Kurdistan, said a source in southeastern Turkey, on the border with Iraq.

The European Union said Tuesday it was speeding up disbursement of aid to help ensure there is no interruption in its support for the Palestinian Authority and U.N. refugee programs.

It said it was bringing forward to the first quarter of 2013 aid payments of 60 million euros ($80 million) to help the Palestinian Authority finance its budget deficit, pay civil servants and pensions, and provide essential public services.

Electricity production in Syria has been halved by a lack of fuel supplies at power plants and transport difficulties caused by deteriorating security, the official daily Tishrin said on Tuesday.

"There is a shortfall of about 3,000 megawatts due to a lack of fuel and gas supplies needed to operate the power plants. Production is only at 5,500 megawatts," down from its normal level of 8,500.

Scores of Palestinians tried to return on Tuesday to a protest outpost they set up outside Jerusalem from which they were evicted at the weekend, activists and Israeli police said.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said a group of protesters had tried to make their way to a hilltop near Maaleh Adumim settlement where they had pitched around 20 tents last Friday before being forced to leave two days later.

Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halaqi arrived in Tehran on Tuesday for consultations with his beleaguered regime's key regional ally, state television reported.

Leading a high ranking delegation, Halaqi was welcomed by his counterpart Mohammad Reza Rahimi.

Egyptian police fired tear gas to disperse protesters in the main railway station in second city Alexandria on Tuesday, hours after 19 people were killed when a train carrying conscripts derailed.

A police official said hundreds of protesters clashed with passengers in the station when they tried to block trains from leaving, and police fired tear gas to disperse them.