Saudi Ambassador Ali Awadh Asiri didn't rule out on Wednesday that the chaos in Syria would spill over into Lebanon as the Lebanese government failed to commit to the dissociation policy.

“The Syrian regime might spread chaos in several areas across Lebanon to divert the developments in the Damascus,” Asiri said in an interview with the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat.

Saudi King Abdullah on Monday upgraded the National Guard, the kingdom's parallel army seen as a pillar of the ruling royals, to a ministry to be headed by his son Prince Mitab.

The decisions were announced in a decree by King Abdullah, the state news agency SPA reported.

An 81-year-old woman who had contracted a SARS-like coronavirus has died in Saudi Arabia, raising the death toll in the kingdom to 18, the health ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

"An 81-year-old woman who was suffering from kidney failure as well as other chronic illnesses has died" in the eastern Al-Ahsaa region of oil-rich Saudi Arabia after contracting the virus, it said.

Cyber hackers attacked several official Saudi websites on Saturday, posting an Algerian flag on their homepages that later vanished, local media reported.

The website of the information minister was among the hacked sites, according to state news broadcaster Al-Ekhbariya and newspapers.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said on Saturday that Syria's embattled President Bashar Assad should not take part in the proposed peace talks aimed at ending that country's deadly conflict.

"We support the will of the Syrian people, which has expressed its will clearly, saying it does not wish to see any role in the conference for Bashar Assad, or any of those whose hands are stained with Syrian blood," he told reporters in Jeddah.

Saudi King Abdullah expressed hope that Lebanon would witness stability and prosperity, calling on the Lebanese to preserve their country and maintain coexistence in it.

Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awadh Asiri conveyed the King's message in a dinner banquet held at his residence in Yarze on Friday eve for current and former premiers.

Tehran on Thursday denied a Bahraini claim it had found an Iranian drone in the sea near Saudi Arabia, and urged Manama to refrain from making "baseless accusations", the ISNA news agency reported.

It cited an unnamed foreign ministry source as denying Bahrain's assertion that the downed aircraft was Iranian.

A Saudi court sentenced eight citizens to jail terms of between 10 and 25 years on Wednesday after convicting them of plotting for al-Qaida, state news agency SPA reported.

The eight were convicted of "forming a group to eliminate police officers, among them Colonel Mubarak al-Sawat" -- killed in 2005, SPA said.

Iran denied on Wednesday claims by Saudi Arabia that alleged spies it arrested were linked to the Islamic republic, and criticized the kingdom for publicizing such allegations.

Foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Araqchi said the reports were "false," maintaining Iran's position of completely rejecting the accusations.

Saudi authorities have arrested 10 more suspects in an alleged Iranian spy ring unveiled two months ago, an interior ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.

The eight Saudis, a Lebanese and a Turk bring the number of people arrested to 28, the official SPA news agency quoted the spokesman as saying.