A Yemeni court on Sunday ordered the amputation of the right hand and left foot of a man convicted of robbery, the official Saba news agency said.

The court in Sanaa found Abdulrahman al-Juri guilty of attacking a man and robbing a sum of cash he was transporting in a vehicle belonging to a money exchange firm, Saba reported.

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi on Sunday welcomed a U.S.-Russian deal to remove Syria's chemical weapons, calling it "a step closer to a political solution" to the conflict.

In a statement, Arabi said the deal would "contribute to providing better conditions for the Geneva II conference and help achieve a political solution to the Syrian crisis."

A U.S.-Russian plan to remove Syria's chemical weapons is a "victory" that averts a war, a Syrian minister said Sunday.

"On one hand, it helps the Syrians emerge from the crisis and on the other it has allowed for averting war against Syria...," Minister of State for National Reconciliation Ali Haidar told Russian news agency Ria Novosti.

A Yemeni court Sunday jailed three al-Qaida militants to between one and seven years after convicting them of plotting to assassinate President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi and the American ambassador.

The same Sanaa court specializing in terrorism cases freed a fourth defendant held on similar charges based on time already served in prison, Agence France Presse reported.

A bomb attack in northwest Syria killed three people on Sunday, including a journalist working for a publication of the ruling Baath party, state news agency SANA said.

The agency reported the killing of Fakhreddine Hassan, a journalist for the Baath party's youth publication.

The British and Iranian foreign ministers will meet in New York later this month, the Foreign Office said Sunday, after both sides indicated they wanted to restore ties suspended after an attack on the British embassy in Tehran in 2011.

"They will be meeting but we have no further details at this stage," a Foreign Office spokeswoman told Agence France Presse, adding that the meeting would take place on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

Russia and the United States may have "different interpretations" of the accord on dismantling Syria's chemical weapons, a prominent Russian lawmaker warned Sunday.

"The main question now is to see whether the Syrian settlement becomes the subject of different, even opposite, interpretations in the United States and Russia," said Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the lower house Duma's foreign affairs committee.

A Bahraini court jailed on Sunday three Shiite Muslims for 10 years each after convicting them of attempting to kill police officers during anti-government protests, lawyers said.

The trio, Jaafar Ali, Hussain Mansur and Mustafa Abdulkarim, had been charged of attempting to kill three policemen "with premeditation" on February 16, in the Shiite village of Karzakan, southwest of Manama.

Turkey on Sunday welcomed a U.S.-Russian deal aimed at disarming Syria of its chemical weapons but warned that Damascus could be seeking to buy more time for its deadly military campaign.

"As a matter of principle, Turkey welcomes the disposal of weapons of mass destruction anywhere in the world, and particularly of chemical weapons in our region," a government statement said.

Saboteurs blew up on Sunday a main oil pipeline in Yemen carrying crude to the Red Sea coast, halting its flow, an industry official and tribal sources said.

The assailants targeted the pipeline at the 107-Kilo spot, in Sarwah district of the Marib province, east of Sanaa, a tribal source said.