Saudi Arabia beheaded one of its citizens on Sunday after he was convicted of killing a relative in the kingdom's north, the interior ministry said.

Awad Rawili stabbed to death Jazaa Rawili, a relative, during an argument , said the statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

Key opposition group the Syrian National Council on Sunday echoed Ankara's accusation that supporters of President Bashar Assad's regime were behind twin car bomb attacks in Turkey that killed dozens a day earlier.

"The Syrian National Council condemns in the strongest terms the cowardly crimes carried out by collaborators of the Syrian regime in the Turkish town of Reyhanli," said the group, an influential faction within the leading opposition National Council.

Damascus on Sunday denied accusations it was behind twin car bomb attacks that left at least 46 people dead in a Turkish town near the Syrian border, as Ankara arrested nine people in the probe.

Cranes were seen lifting debris from buildings destroyed by Saturday's blasts in Reyhanli, one of the main Turkish hubs for Syrian refugees and rebels.

Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu is "fully determined" to try to halt sales by Russia of advanced missiles to Syria when he visits Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin, a minister said Sunday.

A reported Russian plan to sell Damascus S-300 missile batteries "worries us at the highest level and the prime minister is fully determined that this contract should not be fulfilled," Energy and Water Minister Silvan Shalom, a member of the security cabinet, told public radio.

Yemeni police Sunday raided a house in the southern city of Aden, killing one suspected Al-Qaida militant and arresting three, an official said, adding that the cell was plotting attacks on vital installations.

"We have dismantled a terror cell in one of the houses near Mansura district" in Aden, the security official said.

Syrian rebels Sunday freed four Filipino peacekeepers five days after seizing them at an observation post in the Golan Heights, the Philippine military's chief spokesman said, as the U.N. said Qatar played a key role in negotiating their release.

"They have been released. They are now in the custody of the commander of the Philippine battalion in the Golan Heights," Brigadier General Domingo Tutaan told Agence France Presse.

Iran has condemned as a "savage terrorist crime" twin car bomb attacks which killed 43 people and injured dozens in a small Turkish town near the Syrian border, media reported on Sunday.

The state broadcaster's website quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi as saying that "confronting terrorism is the duty of all countries".

The national council of Morocco's conservative Istiqlal party, the main ally of the ruling Islamists, decided on Saturday to pull out of the government, a party official said.

The decision by Istiqlal, which holds several ministerial portfolios including education and the economy, could mean a general election or a cabinet reshuffle by the government headed by the Party of Justice and Development, the PJD.

The U.S. ambassador to Turkey strongly condemned the "vicious attack" in a small Turkish town near the Syrian border Saturday that killed at least 40 people and wounded 100 more.

"On behalf of the United States, I offer our deepest condolences to the families and friends of the dozens of victims of today's murderous attack in Reyhanli," Francis Ricciardone said in a statement.

Polisario Front chief Mohamed Abdelaziz has warned that his movement could take up arms to seek independence from Morocco if the U.N. fails to resolve the Western Sahara conflict, Algeria's APS news agency reported Saturday.

"We have believed in the United Nations, but if it fails to organize a referendum on self-determination in Western Sahara to allow the Sahrawi people to recover independence, then we will take up arms to liberate our territory," APS quoted Abdelaziz as saying.