The Saudi Embassy in Beirut has tasked a team to sue al-Akhbar newspaper after Saudi Ambassador Ali Awadh Asiri accused it of publishing rumors about Riyadh, al-Watan daily reported on Friday.

The Saudi newspaper said that a lawsuit will be filed against “al-Akhbar which has become famous for belonging to the Iran-Hizbullah-Syria axis.”

Flights were disrupted, ships weighed anchor and schools were closed Thursday as a major sandstorm blew through Saudi Arabia and neighboring Gulf states.

In the United Arab Emirates, several flights were diverted and delays were expected to others, a Dubai Airports spokesperson said, as the skies over the city turned yellow.

Saudi Arabia said Thursday a soldier was shot dead and 10 wounded by gunfire from across the Yemen border, its first casualties since launching an operation against Shiite rebels a week ago.

The Border Guards at a post in the kingdom's southwestern Asir region came "under fire from a mountainous interior zone," the interior ministry said in a statement on the official Saudi Press Agency.

Pakistan will hold a special session of parliament on Monday to debate whether to join the Saudi-led coalition against anti-government rebels in Yemen, the prime minister's office said.

Islamabad, a close and longstanding ally of Saudi Arabia, has so far resisted Riyadh's demand for it to join the group of Arab nations trying to prevent Shiite Huthi rebels from taking over in Yemen.

Lebanese Force leader Samir Geagea slammed on Thursday Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah over his latest speech, describing his party's dialogue with the Free Patriotic Movement as Fruitful.

“Lebanon has no interest in verbally assaulting Saudi Arabia or the Arab coalition,” Geagea said at a press conference held in Maarab.

Yemeni rebels stormed President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's palace in his former southern stronghold Aden Thursday, dealing a symbolic blow to the self-exiled leader despite a week of Saudi-led air strikes.

As the war-torn country descended deeper into chaos, Al-Qaida militants freed hundreds of inmates in a jailbreak.

Saudi Arabia on Wednesday told Canada and its province of Quebec to stop criticizing the kingdom's flogging of blogger Raef Badawi, who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes for "insulting Islam."

"The kingdom does not accept any form of interference in its internal affairs and rejects... the attack on the independence of its justice system," the Saudi ambassador to Ottawa, Naif Bin Bandir Al-Sudairy, said in a letter sent last month and made public Wednesday.

Saudi authorities beheaded Wednesday a Yemeni convicted of promoting drugs in the ultra-conservative kingdom, where executions have surged this year, the interior ministry said.

Majed Ahmed Shraheli was found guilty of "receiving and promoting a large amount of hashish," said the interior ministry statement published on the official Saudi Press Agency.

Yemen's foreign minister called Wednesday for a Saudi-led military coalition targeting Shiite rebels in his country to send ground troops.

"Yes I'm calling for this (ground forces) because I think at some stage air strikes will be ineffective," Riyadh Yassin told AFP during an interview in the Saudi capital, where he has taken refuge along with President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

Wary of a rapprochement between Washington and arch-rival Iran, Saudi Arabia has taken matters into its own hands by leading an air war against Shiite rebels in Yemen, experts say.

The Huthi rebels, who Tehran denies arming, were close to seizing most of Yemen when Saudi Arabia sent warplanes into its southern neighbor, with which it shares a 1,800 kilometer (1,100 mile) border.