Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called for early elections, in a statement released on Wednesday, after a series of political crises escalated into calls for his removal.

"When the other side refuses to sit at the table of dialogue and insists on the policy of provoking successive crises in a way that causes serious damage to the supreme interests of Iraqi people, the prime minister found himself forced to call for early elections," said the statement on the premier's website.

Human Rights Watch on Wednesday urged Syrian authorities to end the "indiscriminate" shootings of civilians fleeing to Jordan and other neighboring countries.

"Syrian soldiers on the border with Jordan appear to be shooting indiscriminately at anyone -- including civilian women and children - trying to flee from Syria," the U.S.-based HRW said in a statement.

Growing numbers of victims of the conflict in Syria are being targeted on account of their religion while gross violations of human rights are occurring on a regular basis, U.N. investigators said Wednesday.

The new report from a commission of inquiry (CoI) said that violence has actually been escalating in Syria since May despite the Assad regime's agreement to implement a peace plan the previous month.

A Saudi passenger train heading from the kingdom's eastern city of Dammam to the capital Riyadh derailed on Wednesday, causing injuries but no deaths, a senior transportation official said.

Hamad Abdel Qader, deputy chief of operations at the Saudi Railways Organization, told Agence France Presse that the train derailed "100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Riyadh."

Cyprus, which on July 1 will assume the rotating presidency of the European Union, is ready with its European partners to evacuate third party nationals from Syria, the foreign minister said.

"We are only 100 kilometer from the shores of Syria and Lebanon. Anything that goes wrong there will affect us," Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis said in an interview with Agence France Presse.

Saudi Arabia on Wednesday beheaded one of its citizens after he was found guilty of kidnapping and raping a boy, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by the state news agency SPA.

Mohammed bin Ahmed al-Jubeiri, who kidnapped, beat and then raped a little boy, was executed Wednesday in the kingdom's holy city of Mecca, the ministry said.

Three roadside bombs killed 11 people in Iraq on Wednesday, security and medical officials said, in the latest in a wave of attacks in the country this month.

A bomb exploded near the garden of a house in Madain, south of Baghdad, and a second one detonated after people gathered at the site, an interior ministry official said.

Thousands of Kuwaitis rallied late Tuesday against a court ruling scrapping legislative polls as the opposition called for a constitutional monarchy and a full parliamentary system.

"This is the beginning of the road to a constitutional monarchy," prominent opposition MP Mussallam al-Barrak told a large gathering that lasted until around midnight Tuesday to protest the court ruling.

Gunmen have attacked the headquarters of a pro-government TV station, killing three employees, Syria's state-run news agency said Wednesday.

SANA said the attack on Ikhbariya TV in the town of Drousha, about 20 kilometers south of the capital Damascus, occurred early Wednesday.

Embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Tuesday that his country, in the grips of an anti-regime uprising now in its 16th month, is in a "real situation of war."

"We are witnessing a real situation of war," state news agency SANA quoted him as telling a meeting of the new Syrian cabinet.