The Saudi authorities have arrested 18 suspected spies, including an Iranian and a Lebanese, on charges of espionage for a foreign country, the interior ministry said on Tuesday.

"Sixteen Saudis, an Iranian and a Lebanese were arrested in coordinated and simultaneous operations in four regions of the kingdom," including the capital Riyadh and the holy city of Mecca, the ministry said in a statement.

Iran said Tuesday it has protested to the Saudi embassy about a deadly accident involving one of its diplomats who reports alleged had been "drink driving" when he crashed his vehicle into another.

The unnamed diplomat "had violated the speed limit" when he hit the car in Tehran on Thursday last week, killing its Iranian driver, foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said, quoted by state broadcaster IRIB.

A Saudi court sentenced an Indonesian housemaid to death after she was convicted of murdering her employers' four-year-old child, the Saudi Gazette reported on Monday.

The maid was "charged with decapitating the girl with a cleaver when her parents were away at work and her sisters were at school," the newspaper reported, adding that the woman's lawyer will file an appeal.

Britain's Prince Charles met the head of the world's largest Islamic grouping in the Red Sea city of Jeddah on Sunday, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation said in a statement.

OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu briefed Prince Charles "on the various intra-OIC programs and activities in support of agricultural development, food security and drought resilience," it said.

Interior Minister Marwan Charbel pointed out on Friday that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are keen to preserve the “historic” and “exceptional” ties with Lebanon and to welcome the expats on their territories.

“I have discussed the conditions of the Lebanese community in Saudi Arabia and UAE during talks with the two country's interior ministers,” Charbel said after a meeting with Lebanese businessmen in Riyadh.

Interior Minister Marwan Charbel has said that Lebanon's civil peace requires that rival parties remain committed to the so-called Baabda Declaration and engage in dialogue.

“Lebanon's highest interest, the preservation of civil peace and the distancing of Lebanon from the negative repercussions of the events surrounding it require that all sides commit to the Baabda Declaration and go ahead with dialogue,” Charbel said during his visit to Saudi Arabia where he attended the meeting of Arab Interior Ministers.

Interior Minister Marwan Charbel announced on Wednesday that the cabinet is committed to supporting families fleeing Syria “without any discrimination”, noting that it has become “urgent for Lebanon to receive aid to fulfill its humanitarian duty towards refugees”.

"Lebanon's resources have been exhausted and the country is unable to keep up with the increasing number of refugees,” Charbel said at the opening ceremony of the Arab Interior Ministers' security meeting in Saudi Arabia's Riyadh.

A Saudi firing squad Wednesday executed in public seven men convicted of armed robbery despite last-minute appeals by rights groups that their lives be spared, the interior ministry and a witness said.

The condemned men were convicted of "forming a gang that carried out several armed robberies and thefts with the help of other people," the ministry said in a statement published on the official SPA news agency.

The Philippines said Tuesday that a Filipino who was due to be executed in Saudi Arabia this week had been given an extra three months to raise $1 million in "blood money" that would save his life.

Saudi King Abdullah granted the reprieve to laborer Joselito Zapanta, who had been sentenced to death by beheading for the 2009 murder of his Sudanese landlord, following an appeal by Philippine President Benigno Aquino.

Saudi authorities have freed all but two of a group of women arrested early this month while staging a sit-in to demand the release of Islamist prisoners in the city of Buraida, police said on Monday.

"All women arrested have been freed, with the exception of two of them who refused to leave even after all procedures for their release were completed," a police spokesman in the northern Qassim province said in a statement carried by the SPA news agency.