Kuwait's ruler warned Tuesday that declines in the oil price were damaging the economy of the energy-rich Gulf state, urging lawmakers to "stop squandering resources" and to diversify revenues.

"We are witnessing a new cycle of low oil prices as a result of economic and political factors that have hit the global economy and started to negatively impact our national economy," Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah said in a speech to open the new parliamentary term.

The U.S.-led coalition carried out fresh air strikes Monday against jihadists in Syria and Iraq as Washington called for the battle against the Islamic State group to be taken to the Internet.

Fighting continued to rage for the strategic Syrian border town of Kobane, and in Iraq a suicide bomber was reported to have killed at least 14 pro-government fighters south of Baghdad.

Kuwait will host international talks next week aimed at finding ways to undermine the slick online campaign attracting foreign fighters to the ranks of Islamic militants battling in Iraq and Syria.

"The conference will present an opportunity for an in-depth exchange of ideas for increasing cooperation among coalition partners," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Thursday.

International advocacy group Human Rights Watch called on Kuwait on Sunday to stop targeting opponents through revoking their citizenship and to reinstate withdrawn nationalities.

Kuwait -- where citizens have elected a parliament for decades and which is traditionally seen as one of the more tolerant Gulf monarchies -- was damaging its reputation with the practice, HRW said.

Arab states in the Gulf plan to launch a joint naval force, a top Kuwaiti defense official said on Wednesday, in a bid to protect waters shared with neighboring Iran.

The new force is expected to be formed in the "coming months", Major General Ahmad Yussef al-Mulla was quoted as saying by the official KUNA news agency.

The Kuwaiti government said it revoked the citizenship of 18 people on Monday, including a prominent opposition figure, citing irregularities in granting them their nationality.

According to a statement, some of those who lost their citizenship had been naturalized on the basis of fake documents, others had dual citizenship, which is outlawed, and others had the status revoked for security reasons.

Kuwait's lower court on Tuesday acquitted 67 stateless people charged with taking part in an illegal protest and assaulting police.

The stateless men, locally known as bidoons, were arrested in October 2012 at a gathering to mark international non-violence day and demand the right to Kuwaiti citizenship and other rights.

Kuwait has arrested several suspected members of the Islamic State group and is monitoring dozens more under its commitment to the U.S.-led international coalition against the jihadists, media reported Thursday.

Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled al-Sabah will visit the Palestinian territories this weekend for talks on reconciliation among the Palestinians, an official said Wednesday.

The visit will be the first by a senior Kuwaiti official since the Palestinian Authority was created two decades ago.

A Kuwaiti court sentenced a Sunni Islamist activist to three years in jail Tuesday for posting remarks deemed derogatory to Shiite Muslims on his Twitter account.

Mubarak al-Bathali, who was jailed for six months in 2011 on similar charges, was sentenced after the court found enough evidence that his tweets constituted an insult to the faith of minority Shiites and undermined national unity, a copy of the ruling said.