Saudi Arabia beheaded a Sri Lankan maid on Wednesday after she was convicted of murdering her employer's baby, the interior ministry announced, despite calls for a stay of execution.

Rizana Nafeek smothered the infant to death after an argument with the child's mother, her employer, the ministry statement carried by the official SPA news agency said.

Saudi authorities on Tuesday beheaded a Syrian convicted of trafficking a large amount of narcotic pills, the interior ministry said, in the first execution in the kingdom this year.

Mohammed Darwish was arrested "as he was trafficking a large amount of narcotic pills into the kingdom," the ministry said in a statement carried by official news agency SPA.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt on Saturday called for a peaceful solution to the conflict roiling Syria, but said the terms of a settlement to end the bloodshed there must be defined by the Syrian people.

"A peaceful solution in Syria is necessary and it is desired by Arab countries and the international community," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said at a joint news conference with his Egyptian counterpart Mohammed Kamel Amr.

emen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh is to travel to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, diplomatic sources said Thursday, as his opponents called for him to be kept out of politics ahead of a stalled national dialogue.

"One week ago, Saleh applied for a visa to receive medical treatment in Saudi Arabia. There is Saudi approval for the request," a diplomat said.

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah rejected on Thursday a suggestion that the Lebanese-Syrian border be closed due to the state's inability to support the burden of refugees pouring in from the war-torn country.

He said during a televised speech marking 40 days after Ashura: “The border with Syria should not be shut and the refugees, regardless if they support or oppose the Syrian regime, should be hosted in Lebanon.”

Saudi intellectuals on Wednesday urged the kingdom's crown prince to order the release of a liberal writer accused of insulting Islam via his Twitter account.

A petition, signed by around 500 people and addressed to Salman bin Abdul Aziz, called for Turki al-Hamad's "immediate and unconditional release."

Agriculture Minister Hussein al-Hajj Hassan banned on Wednesday the import of livestock from the southern Brazilian state of Parana where a case of atypical mad cow disease was confirmed last month.

Al-Hajj Hassan banned as well the import of frozen meat from Parana.

Residents of Saudi Arabia, where booze and New Year's celebrations are banned, flooded into neighboring Bahrain in search of festivities to ring in 2013.

More than 80,000 cars crossed a causeway over the Gulf to Bahrain Monday night to celebrate New Year's Eve, the Saudi newspaper al-Youm reported on Tuesday. Saudi Arabia adheres to a strict interpretation of Islam and bans alcohol as well as celebrations of Christmas and New Year's Eve. It also prohibits unrelated men and women from mingling.

A Bangladeshi court Sunday sentenced five people to death for the murder of a Saudi diplomat in the capital Dhaka in March this year, a senior police official said.

Khalaf al-Ali, 45, the head of Saudi citizen affairs at the embassy, was shot while taking a late-night walk near his home in the city's Gulshan area. He was rushed to hospital where he died three hours later.

The Saudi aviation authority has awarded Qatar Airways and Bahrain's Gulf Air licenses to operate domestic flights in the vast desert kingdom.

The national carriers of the two neighboring Gulf states will be the first foreign airlines to operate domestic flights in the oil-rich nation, competing mainly with the government-owned Saudia and budget carrier NAS.