Turkey and Azerbaijan signed on Monday an agreement to build a pipeline to carry 10 billion cubic meters of Azeri gas to European markets starting in 2017, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The deal comes as the EU's plans to build the so-called Nabucco pipeline across Turkey to bring in Caspian Sea gas and reduce Europe's dependence on Russia has struggled to sign up suppliers.

An Armenian soldier was shot dead by an Azerbaijani sniper on the frontline in the disputed region of Nagorny Karabakh on Saturday, the separatist Karabakh defense ministry said.

"Nineteen-year-old conscript Aren Simonian died because of enemy sniper fire," the ministry said in a brief statement.

As the global population hits seven billion, experts are warning that skewed gender ratios could fuel the emergence of volatile "bachelor nations" driven by an aggressive competition for brides.

The precise consequences of what French population expert Christophe Guilmoto calls the "alarming demographic masculinization" of countries such as India and China as the result of sex-selective abortion remain unclear.

The authorities in Azerbaijan have removed a monument to deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak which had angered government critics, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported Wednesday.

The statue of the former Egyptian leader sitting in an armchair in front of three pyramids was taken away from a park in the town of Khirdalan near the capital of the ex-Soviet republic on Tuesday.

An Azerbaijani soldier on Sunday shot dead seven of his fellow servicemen at a military base, a joint statement from the defense ministry and the military prosecutor's office said Monday.

An investigation is now under way, the joint statement said. The statement did not name the killer or give any reasons for the incident.