An Egyptian court on Tuesday sentenced a man to death for the murder of a student after she rejected his advances, a judicial source said, in a case that sparked widespread outrage.

Mohamed Adel was found guilty of the "premeditated murder" of fellow university student Nayera Ashraf after he confessed to the crime in court, the source told AFP.

The verdict, handed down in Mansoura north of Cairo after the trial opened on Sunday, will now be referred to the grand mufti, Egypt's top theological authority -- a formality in death penalty cases.

More than 100 people, including many women, have been murdered in a Syrian camp in just 18 months, the UN said Tuesday, demanding countries repatriate their citizens.

The Al-Hol camp is increasingly unsafe and the child detainees are being condemned to a life with no future, said Imran Riza, the UN resident coordinator in Syria.

Al-Hol, in the Kurdish-controlled northeast, was meant as a temporary detention facility.

An Iranian appeals court has upheld an eight-year prison sentence against a Frenchman convicted on spying charges, his Paris-based lawyer said Tuesday.

Benjamin Briere was arrested in May 2020 after taking pictures in a national park with a recreational drone. His lawyers and family have accused Iran of holding him as a "hostage".

The lawyer, Philippe Valent, said Briere's case was being "instrumentalised" by the Iranian authorities.

Chief negotiators from the United States and Iran began indirect talks in Qatar on Tuesday, bidding to remove obstacles that have stalled attempts to revive a landmark nuclear deal.

The indirect negotiations headed by US special envoy Robert Malley and Iran's Ali Bagheri come after more than a year of European Union-mediated talks in Vienna on a return to the 2015 agreement between Tehran and world powers.

Jordan's public prosecutor on Tuesday launched an investigation into a chlorine gas leak that killed 13 people and injured more than 300 in the coastal city of Aqaba.

Five foreigners including at least four Asian nationals where among those killed on Monday when a tank of the toxic gas fell on the dockside in the Red Sea port, officials said.

A judicial source told AFP that the country's public prosecutor and team of forensic experts had moved "to examine and collect samples and evidence at the scene of the accident and initiate investigation procedures".

Israeli lawmakers on Tuesday unanimously approved a bill to dissolve parliament, a key legislative step that pushes the country closer towards its fifth election in less than four years.

Members of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's outgoing coalition and the opposition led by ex-premier Benjamin Netanyahu have been sparring in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, since last week over a dissolution bill.

The coalition said it wanted quick approval of the bill after Bennett announced last week that his year-old, ideologically divided, eight-party alliance was no longer tenable.

Iran's chief negotiator joined his US counterpart in Qatar on Tuesday ahead of indirect talks between the two rivals aimed at reviving a landmark nuclear deal, officials and media said.

Ali Bagheri and his delegation arrived in Doha, Iran's IRNA news agency said, after US special envoy Robert Malley held talks with Qatar's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

Thirteen people were killed, including at least four Asian migrants, when toxic chlorine gas escaped on the dockside in the Jordanian Red Sea port of Aqaba, officials said.

More than 250 people were injured in the accident Monday, of whom 123 remained in hospital on Tuesday, according to the latest toll update.

Most were being treated for the effects of breathing chlorine gas, a common cleaning agent that also has a range of other industrial uses and can be employed as a chemical weapons agent.

A US drone strike in northwestern Syria killed a Yemeni leader of a local jihadist group affiliated to Al-Qaeda, the US military and a Syrian war monitor said.

The strike, carried out on Monday just before midnight (2100 GMT) on the eastern edge of the city of Idlib, took out a man described as a leader of the Hurras al-Deen group.

"Abu Hamzah al Yemeni was travelling alone on a motorcycle at the time of the strike," US Central Command said in a statement, adding that an "initial review indicates no civilian casualties".

A chlorine gas explosion killed 12 people and injured more than 250 on Monday, authorities said, when a tank that fell from a crane released a poisonous yellow cloud at Jordan's Aqaba port.

Footage on state-owned Al-Mamlaka TV showed the large cylinder, said to have been carrying about 30 tonnes of gas, plunging from a crane on a moored vessel and violently releasing the chlorine gas cloud.

The force of the blast sent a truck rolling down the dock, while port workers ran for their lives.