Authorities in Kuwait on Monday hanged three convicted murderers in the first executions in the Gulf state since May 2007, the ministry of justice said.

The men, a Pakistani, a Saudi and a stateless Arab, were hanged at the central jail, west of the capital Kuwait City, in front of judicial and security officials, the ministry said.

Kuwait's lower court on Sunday sentenced opposition tweeter Hamed al-Khaledi to two years in jail on charges of insulting the Gulf state's ruler, a rights activist said.

"Khaledi has been sentenced to two years in jail with immediate effect," the director of the Kuwait Society for Human Rights, Mohammad al-Humaidi, said on his Twitter account.

Kuwait has arrested at least six Iraqi fishermen and seized their boats for crossing into the emirate's territorial waters, an Iraqi official told AFP on Saturday.

The group were arrested on Friday, according to Abed Ali Fadhel, head of the city council of Fao, a port town 535 kilometers (332 miles) south of Baghdad.

Kuwait's appeals court on Wednesday toughened the jail term of an opposition tweeter to five years for calling for a coup and insulting the emir of the Gulf state.

Bader al-Rasheedi was jailed on November 28 after the lower court gave him a two-year term, but the appeals court decided to increase this to five years, director of the Kuwait Society for Human Rights Mohammad al-Humaidi told Agence France Presse.

Kuwait's parliament on Wednesday passed a bill to grant citizenship to up to 4,000 foreigners in 2013 in a move to resolve the problem of stateless people in the oil-rich state.

Forty-three members, including all cabinet ministers present, voted in favor of the law while only two MPs abstained without any opposition. To take effect, the law also must be signed by the emir.

Kuwait, where expats make up 68 percent of the population, plans to reduce the number of foreigners living in the Gulf state by one million over the next decade, a minister said on Tuesday.

"The ministry will take decisions and measures... aimed at reducing the number of expatriate workers by 100,000 every year for 10 years to reach one million," Social Affairs and Labor Minister Thekra al-Rasheedi told the official KUNA news agency.

Kuwait on Monday urged Iraq to allow work to continue to repair markers on their common border after a number of Iraqis rioted near the site and disrupted the U.N.-supervised repairs.

A foreign ministry official cited by the state-run KUNA news agency said a number of Iraqi citizens on Monday erected a big tent on the border near marker 105 and removed a metal pipe between markers 105 and 106.

Kuwaiti coast guards shot dead on Monday a suspected drugs smuggler as they chased a boat in the emirate's territorial waters, the interior ministry said.

The ministry did not reveal the identity of the dead man but a security official told Agence France Presse that he was Iranian.

A court in Kuwait on Thursday sentenced two opposition activists to prison terms on charges of writing remarks on their Twitter accounts that were deemed offensive to the emir, a defense lawyer said.

Sager al-Hashash was given two years in jail with immediate effect while Nasser al-Deehani was handed a 20-month term but was asked to pay 200 dinars ($700) to suspend it, lawyer Khaled al-Humoud wrote on his own Twitter account.

The revival of Lebanese ties with Gulf states should come by imposing the appropriate measures to halt interference in the local affairs of the neighboring country Syria, al-Mustaqbal MP Jamal al-Jarrah said on Thursday.

The lawmaker called on officials to abide by the dissociation policy, which is stated in the Baabda declaration.