Three people were killed and 18 others wounded in attacks in Iraq on Wednesday, security officials said, as Baghdad hosted key nuclear talks in its latest effort to emerge from decades of isolation.

Three people were killed and 14 others wounded in a shooting and three roadside bombings in Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, a police lieutenant colonel and Dr. Ahmed Ibrahim of Baquba General Hospital said.

Three Iranian truck drivers have been abducted by "armed opposition groups" in Syria, according to Iran's charge d’affaires in Damascus quoted by media Wednesday.

Abbas Golrou said the drivers, identified as Morteza Adeli, Hussein Alinejad and Esmaeel Mohammed Zeinali, were taking unspecified cargo from Iran to Syria when they were abducted on Monday.

Saudi's defense ministry has signed a $3 billion deal with Britain to buy trainer jets for the kingdom's air force, SPA state news agency reported on Wednesday.

The deal also includes simulators, ground and training equipment and spare parts, SPA said, quoting a defense ministry official.

Baghdad's airport opened Wednesday morning a day after a dust storm stopped flights, officials said, ahead of talks between world powers and Iran over Tehran's controversial nuclear program.

It had been unclear on Tuesday whether the storm would clear in time for the talks between the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France, plus Germany -- and Iran.

Regime forces Wednesday pounded rebel bastion Rastan, in central Syria, at an average rate of "one shell a minute," said a monitoring group, adding that six people were killed across the country.

Besieged by regime forces, Rastan is home to a large number of rebel fighters, according to opposition sources.

Egyptians voted Wednesday in the country's first free presidential elections, with Islamists and secularists vying for power with competing visions of an Egypt free of ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak's iron grip.

Several hours after polls opened at 08:00 a.m. (06:00 GMT), there were still lines of people waiting to vote, many in a festive mood.

Iran on Tuesday announced it was loading domestically produced, 20-percent enriched uranium fuel into its Tehran reactor, underlining its atomic progress on the eve of crucial talks with six world powers in Baghdad.

Two nuclear plates were delivered to the research reactor and "one of them was loaded into the core," the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said in a statement carried by state media.

A UAE court jailed 10 pirates for life on Tuesday after they were convicted of hijacking a ship east of Oman in the Arabian Sea last year, state news agency WAM reported.

The life sentence, which equates to 25 years, will be followed by deportation, WAM said.

A Cairo court on Tuesday sentenced five policemen to 10 years in jail in absentia for the killing of protesters during the uprising which ousted president Hosni Mubarak, judicial sources told Agence France Presse.

Judge Mohammed Faheem, who issued the ruling, also handed out one-year suspended sentences to two other policemen.

Israel is "highly skeptical" about a deal between the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran aimed at trying to solve the dispute over its nuclear drive, a senior official said on Tuesday.

"We are highly skeptical about this apparent agreement between the IAEA and Iran," he told Agence France Presse, speaking on condition of anonymity.