Saudi Arabia is delivering military equipment to Syrian rebels in an effort to stop bloodshed by President Bashar Assad's regime, a top Arab diplomat said on Saturday.

"Saudi military equipment is on its way to Jordan to arm the Free Syrian Army," the diplomat told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Saudi Arabia has shut down its embassy in Syria and has withdrawn all its staff, the foreign ministry announced Wednesday in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.

"Due the developments in Syria, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has shut down its embassy in Damascus and withdrawn all its diplomats and staff there," said the statement.

Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz went to Algeria for a vacation after the results of medical tests he underwent in the United States were "reassuring," the royal palace announced on Wednesday.

Prince Nayef, the kingdom's veteran internal security czar, "has finished previously scheduled medical tests in (the U.S. city of) Cleveland with reassuring results," said the statement carried by state news agency SPA.

Saudi Arabia's oil minister said Wednesday that his country and other oil exporters are ready to offset any shortfalls in supply because of market volatility — an apparent reference to showdowns with Iran over its nuclear program.

"There is ample production and refining capacity ... Saudi Arabia and others remain poised to make good any shortfalls — perceived or real — in crude oil supply," said Ali Al-Naimi at a major oil conference in Kuwait where he addressed envoys alongside Iranian oil minister Rostam Ghasemi. A transcript of Al-Naimi's remarks was given to reporters.

Saudi Arabia on Tuesday executed a Saudi who killed a man in a tribal feud as well as a Syrian drug smuggler, the ministry of interior announced.

"Humam Eid al-Kindar, a Syrian, was arrested for smuggling 169,000 banned pills," state news agency SPA quoted a ministry statement as saying.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are backing "armed terrorist gangs" operating in Syria and so are responsible for the bloodshed in the country, Information Minister Adnan Mahmoud told Agence France Presse on Monday.

"Some of the countries backing armed terrorist gangs, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are accomplices to the terrorism targeting the Syrian people ... and bear responsibility for the bloodletting," he said.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on Sunday slammed the Syrian regime, accusing it of committing "butchery against its people."

At least 8,500 people, most of them civilians, have been killed since the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime began in March 2011, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal on Saturday told his Arab and Russian counterparts that a Russian-Chinese veto of a U.N. resolution condemning Syria allowed the regime's "brutality" to continue.

The stand of "the countries that thwarted the U.N. Security Council resolution and voted against the resolution of the General Assembly on Syria gave the Syrian regime a license to extend its brutal practices against the Syrian people, without compassion or mercy," he said.

Russia on Saturday said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made clear to the U.N.-Arab League envoy for Syria Kofi Annan that Moscow is opposed to "crude interference" from the outside into Syrian internal affairs.

"A particular emphasis was placed on the inadmissibility of trampling on international legal norms, including through crude interference in Syria's internal affairs," the foreign ministry said after a meeting earlier between Lavrov and Annan in Cairo.

Saudi authorities have ordered a probe after more than 50 women students were hurt when security forces dispersed a campus protest this week, media and a local official said on Friday.

On Wednesday members of the religious police and law enforcement officers used water cannons to break up a sit-in by women students at the Abha University in the south of Saudi Arabia, the Sebaq news website reported.