International envoy Kofi Annan said Wednesday he had received a written pledge from the Syrian regime to halt fighting from dawn on Thursday in line with his U.N. and Arab League-backed peace plan.

Annan had received a letter from Syria's foreign minister pledging "to cease all military fighting throughout Syrian territory as of 6:00 am tomorrow, while reserving the right to respond proportionately to any attacks carried out by armed terrorist groups against civilians, government forces or public and private property'," his spokesman said in a statement.

A Saudi court sentenced a radical cleric who fiercely supports the segregation of the sexes to five years in prison on Wednesday for "incitement" against the kingdom's rulers, media reported.

Youssef al-Ahmed was also sentenced to a five-year travel ban and fined 100,000 Saudi riyals ($26,600), said aleqt.com, the website of Al-Eqtesadiya daily.

Yemeni soldiers and tribesmen were locked in battles with al-Qaida militants trying to take over a strategic town in the country's south, in a third consecutive day of clashes, residents said.

The fighting, which has killed at least 124 people since the Islamists raided an army barracks on Monday, raged on the outskirts of Loder, the Abyan province town that the extremists have been trying to retake.

Bahrainis wielding knives and sticks attacked residents of the kingdom's Shiite villages overnight beating them in retaliation for a bomb attack against policemen, witnesses and the opposition said Wednesday.

The assailants, who according to witnesses came from Sunni neighborhoods, were responding to messages posted online to avenge the bomb attack that injured seven policemen in a Shiite village on Monday.

China on Wednesday called on Syria to heed a plan aimed at bringing peace to the conflict-ridden country, saying it was "deeply concerned" by the continuing violence.

The call came after the Syrian government missed a key Tuesday deadline to withdraw troops from populated centers, under the six-point plan brokered by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet his Palestinian counterpart Salam Fayyad in Jerusalem next week, a spokesman from the Israeli leader's office told Agence France Presse.

A Palestinian official had on Tuesday said the two men would meet on April 17, and on Wednesday, Netanyahu's spokesman Ofir Gendelman confirmed the date.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan warned on Wednesday it would be "disastrous" if rebels fighting the Syrian regime were to be armed, as proposed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

"I've always said the militarization of the conflict will be disastrous," Annan told a news conference in Tehran during a visit to Iran, Syria's chief ally in the Middle East.

Syrian forces shelled the flashpoint city of Homs on Wednesday and raided other parts of the country, killing eight civilians as they pressed their assaults on protest hubs, monitors said.

The attacks occurred a day after a U.N.-Arab League peace plan was scheduled to enter into effect, but envoy Kofi Annan said Wednesday there was still a chance to salvage his bid to end hostilities within another 24 hours.

Shots fired by Syrian forces early Wednesday hit a Syrian refugee camp just across the border with Turkey, Turkish media reported.

News channel CNN-Turk showed images of automatic rifle fire towards Turkish territory from a border surveillance building flying the Syrian flag near Kilis in southeastern Turkey.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday she would tell Russia that the risk of civil war was rising in Syria, adding that she expected "rough" diplomacy ahead.

Clinton said she would raise the Syria crisis when she meets Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in talks among foreign ministers of the Group of Eight major economies starting in Washington on Wednesday.