Syria's embattled President Bashar al-Assad issued a decree on Tuesday setting May 7 as the date for parliamentary elections that were delayed last year, the state news agency SANA reported.

The vote is part of a raft of reforms announced by Assad in a bid to calm a year-long uprising against his regime that began with democracy protests.

Baghdad's international airport will shut from March 26 until the end of an Arab League summit in the Iraqi capital on March 29, the country's civil aviation chief told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

"We will close off flights from the 26th until the end of the summit," said Nasser Hussein Bandar, head of Iraq's civil aviation authority. "It (the airport) will be used for receiving delegations."

Russia said Tuesday it will press Syria to accept international monitors who could observe the implementation of a "simultaneous" ceasefire between government troops and rebels.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was discussing the proposal with both the Arab League countries and at the United Nations, where the Security Council debated the crisis on Monday.

Syria has planted landmines near its borders with Lebanon and Turkey, along routes used by refugees fleeing the strife-torn country, Human Rights Watch (HRW) charged on Tuesday.

"The Syrian regime is trying to prevent people from going in and from fleeing the country," said Nadim Houry, deputy director of the group's Middle East and North Africa division.

Five al-Qaida militants were killed in an air strike on their car in Yemen's Bayda province on Tuesday, a security official said, after unrest there earlier in the day left five people dead.

"A fighter jet raided a car carrying five al-Qaida militants," said the official. "All five were killed." A tribal chief confirmed the raid.

Saudi Arabia on Tuesday executed a Saudi who killed a man in a tribal feud as well as a Syrian drug smuggler, the ministry of interior announced.

"Humam Eid al-Kindar, a Syrian, was arrested for smuggling 169,000 banned pills," state news agency SPA quoted a ministry statement as saying.

An Algerian court sentenced the head of al-Qaida's north African offshoot to death in his absence Tuesday for a string of 2007 attacks, including the deadly bombing of the prime minister's office.

Abdelmalek Droukdel, leader of al-Qaida in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM), and eight co-defendants were sentenced to death for premeditated murder, membership of a terrorist group and attacks using explosives, said judge Tayeb Hillali of the court in Algiers.

Three policemen were killed in a suicide attack in Yemen's Bayda province Tuesday that sparked clashes in which a local al-Qaida chief also died, a security official said.

"Three policemen were killed and six others were wounded in a suicide attack on a checkpoint in Suwadeya," the official said, referring to a village in Bayda province, south of Sanaa.

International mediator Kofi Annan said he expected a response from Damascus on Tuesday on proposals he made during his visit to Syria at the weekend, and again demanded a halt to violence.

"I am expecting to hear from Syrian authorities today since I left some concrete proposals for them to consider," the U.N. and Arab League envoy told reporters in Ankara after a meeting with the Syrian opposition.

Syrian military forces have recaptured the northern rebel stronghold of Idlib along the border with Turkey, a major base that army defectors had held for months, a pro-government newspaper reported Tuesday.

Fresh from a month long campaign that drove rebels out of another key base in central Homs, President Bashar Assad's forces launched a siege on the city of Idlib three days ago. The city had been under control of hundreds of fighters for the rebel Free Syrian Army.