Saudi Arabia on Wednesday beheaded one of its citizens after he was found guilty of kidnapping and raping a boy, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by the state news agency SPA.

Mohammed bin Ahmed al-Jubeiri, who kidnapped, beat and then raped a little boy, was executed Wednesday in the kingdom's holy city of Mecca, the ministry said.

Three roadside bombs killed 11 people in Iraq on Wednesday, security and medical officials said, in the latest in a wave of attacks in the country this month.

A bomb exploded near the garden of a house in Madain, south of Baghdad, and a second one detonated after people gathered at the site, an interior ministry official said.

Thousands of Kuwaitis rallied late Tuesday against a court ruling scrapping legislative polls as the opposition called for a constitutional monarchy and a full parliamentary system.

"This is the beginning of the road to a constitutional monarchy," prominent opposition MP Mussallam al-Barrak told a large gathering that lasted until around midnight Tuesday to protest the court ruling.

Gunmen have attacked the headquarters of a pro-government TV station, killing three employees, Syria's state-run news agency said Wednesday.

SANA said the attack on Ikhbariya TV in the town of Drousha, about 20 kilometers south of the capital Damascus, occurred early Wednesday.

Embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Tuesday that his country, in the grips of an anti-regime uprising now in its 16th month, is in a "real situation of war."

"We are witnessing a real situation of war," state news agency SANA quoted him as telling a meeting of the new Syrian cabinet.

The former chief of the main opposition Syrian National Council, Burhan Ghalioun, told Agence France Presse he visited Syria for a few hours on Tuesday to "boost the morale" of rebels.

Ghalioun, a senior SNC executive board member, spoke to AFP in Beirut by telephone after his first visit to Syria in more than two years, and said he entered the country secretly and had "discussions with revolutionaries."

The United States said Tuesday that a "desperate" President Bashar Assad was slowly losing his grip on power, citing defections and fighting raging increasingly close to Damascus.

Washington offered new support to its NATO ally Turkey after Syrian forces shot down one of its fighter planes and also pushed back on Russia's insistence that Iran should take part in a planned international conference on Syria.

The United Nations mission in Syria will remain suspended because conflict between government and opposition forces is intensifying, a top U.N. official told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday.

And U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has still not secured agreement on a political transition plan that all the major powers can back so that an international meeting on the conflict can go ahead this week, diplomats said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has agreed to attend an international meeting on the Syria conflict in Geneva on Saturday, Russia's U.N. envoy said Tuesday.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan wants to hold the meeting of the major powers in Geneva in a final bid to get agreement on a political transition plan for Syria.

Russia on Tuesday said its regional ally Syria's downing of a Turkish jet should not be viewed as a provocation and urged all nations to tone down their rhetoric over the incident.

"We believe it is important that the incident is not viewed as a provocation or an intentional action, and that it does not lead to destabilizing the situation," the foreign ministry said in its first comment on Friday's Phantom 4 jet downing.