Damascus  - Hundreds of Iraqi refugees in Syria will return home on October 4 in the latest of a series of repatriations as violence declines in Iraq, an Iraqi embassy source said Thursday.

Iraq's government, which will fund the trip, has encouraged Iraqis who fled after the US-led invasion to return. It is funding air tickets and giving each refugee 500 US dollars, the source said.

Hundreds of Iraqi refugees already left Syria by land a couple of months ago. October's repatriation will be the first by air, the source said.

Damascus - Hamas denied Tuesday news reports that the secretary of its exiled leader Khaled Mashaal had been assassinated in the Syrian city of Homs.

"The assassination news that have been circulated by Israeli media is totally baseless and misleading" a Hamas source told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

On Monday, a US-based Syrian opposition group, the Reform Party of Syria (RPS), said on its website that Hisham al-Labadani had been dragged from his car in broad daylight and shot last Thursday.

Damascus - Syria is sending its first ambassador in a quarter-century to Baghdad on Tuesday, the Syrian state news agency has reported.

The former governor of Quneitra in south-western Syria, Nawaf al- Faris, will be the first Syrian ambassador to Iraq since diplomatic relations were broken off in the early part of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's rule, in 1982.

The sending of an ambassador to Iraq by the Syrians comes as a sign of not only rapprochement between Baathist Syria and formerly- Baathist Iraq, but a possible indication of Syria's growing desire to display goodwill towards the US government, long an enemy.

Homs, Syria - The secretary of exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaahl has been assassinated in the Syrian city of Homs, a US-based Syrian opposition group said Monday.

The Reform Party of Syria (RPS) said on its website that Hisham al-Labadani was dragged from his car in broad daylight and shot on Thursday.

The website cited "operatives close to the event" as saying that the assassination was a signal that some elements of the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad were sending to Hamas to end its ties with Iran, the Islamist group's main sponsor.

Rome  - Syria Thursday marked another step in its improving relations with the West by signing an agreement with Italy aimed at boosting political, economic and cultural ties.

"Co-operation between Italy and Syria has resumed through intense dialogue," Italian Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, said at a joint news conference in Rome with Syrian counterpart, Wallid Moallem.

Rome  - Syrian foreign minister Wallid Moallem on Thursday indicated Syria would not follow its Russian ally's decision to recognize South Ossetia's independence.

"We have not recognized Kosovo," Mo'allem said in Rome, replying to a question on whether Damascus would, given its close ties to Moscow, also recognize the breakaway Georgian region's independence.