A policeman is to face trial over the death of a wounded Islamist in hospital, Egypt's judiciary said Wednesday, in the second such case this week against the police.

The policeman, detained since February, is to be tried in criminal court on charges of "voluntary homicide", a judicial official said, without giving a date.

Saudi security forces on Wednesday ended a weeks-long exercise on the Iraqi border where three troopers died in a January attack blamed on "terrorists."

Border Guards and other interior ministry units have been conducting daily training as part of the "first joint tactical" exercise north of Arar city, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

Fears that Shiite Iran will remain a potential nuclear threat under a mooted international deal have raised concerns that Tehran's Sunni rival Saudi Arabia could seek its own atomic capability.

As the March 31 deadline for talks between Tehran and world powers approaches, an influential Saudi prince has suggested his country will respond in kind if a final deal leaves open the possibility of a nuclear Iran.

A Syrian on Wednesday became the latest person to be beheaded in Saudi Arabia, where executions have surged this year.

The killing of Firas Mohammed al-Kor brought to 49 the number of death sentences carried out in 2015, compared with 87 for all of last year, according to Agence France Presse tallies.

Two gunmen on a motorbike shot dead a top official of the Shiite Huthi militia in the Yemeni capital on Wednesday, a security source said.

Abdul Karim al-Khiwani, who was a member of the Revolutionary Committee of the Huthis that control Sanaa, was shot close to his home in an incident confirmed by Huthi television channel Al-Massira.

Syria's military said Wednesday it downed an American drone over suspicions it was spying, in what would be its first attack on an aircraft in the U.S.-led coalition battling jihadists.

A military source, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the drone was not immediately identified as being American but was shot down as a hostile aircraft.

A top U.S. envoy has assured Turkey that Washington is seeking a settlement to the conflict in Syria that excludes President Bashar Assad, the U.S. embassy said on Wednesday.

John Allen, who is coordinating the international coalition against the Islamic State group, held talks with Turkish foreign ministry undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu on Tuesday in Ankara on "our shared efforts to degrade and defeat ISIL," the embassy said, using an alternative name for IS.

A rare bombing in mainly Shiite southern Iraq killed at least three people and wounded four others near Umm Qasr port on Wednesday, police and a hospital source said.

The bomb exploded at about 9:00 am (0600 GMT) in an area where trucks wait to enter the port near the city of Basra to pick up goods, hitting a vehicle belonging to a transport company.

Kuwaiti secret police arrested the leader of an opposition youth group early on Wednesday following a complaint from the Saudi embassy, the interior ministry and activists said.

Civil Democratic Movement leader Tareq al-Mutairi was detained after he ignored a summons by the public prosecutor's office over a complaint by the Saudi embassy, the interior ministry said on its Twitter account.

Iraqi troops and militia looted and burned homes and destroyed villages after breaking the Islamic State group's months-long siege of a Turkmen town last August, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

"Following the operations to end the Amerli siege, pro-government militias and volunteer fighters as well as Iraqi security forces raided Sunni villages and neighbourhoods around Amerli in Salaheddin and Kirkuk provinces," the New York-based group said in a report.