Police in Bangladesh said Wednesday they had arrested four people over the mugging death of a Saudi Arabian diplomat in the capital in March.

Khalaf al-Ali, 45, the head of Saudi citizen affairs at the embassy in Dhaka, was shot while taking a late-night walk near his home in the city's Gulshan area. He was rushed to a local hospital where he died three hours later.

Saudi Arabia collected nearly $32.5 million on the first day of a fundraising campaign to support people in Syria, where an uprising has left thousands dead, according to official figures on Tuesday.

"The total cash donations collected by the national Saudi campaign in support of the brothers in Syria reached 121,771,811 riyals ($32.5 million) on the first day (Monday)," official news agency SPA

Saudi Arabia has called for an extraordinary summit of Muslim leaders to be held next month to address risks of "sedition" threatening Muslim countries, state news agency SPA reported on Sunday.

Saudi King Abdullah has called for "an extraordinary Islamic solidarity meeting to ensure... unity during this delicate time as the Muslim world faces dangers of fragmentation and sedition," SPA quoted Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal as saying.

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States, has been named the country's new intelligence chief, the royal palace announced on Thursday.

Prince Bandar, who retains his job as secretary general of Saudi Arabia's National Security Council, replaces Mogren bin Abdel Aziz, who resigned.

Ramadan will begin on Friday in most Arab countries, religious authorities announced, but in Oman and Syria as well as for Iraq's Sunni Muslims and in non-Arab Iran it will start on Saturday.

Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, as well as Lebanon's Sunni Muslims, were among those to announce a Friday start.

A Lebanese man nicknamed the "tattoo king" has been sentenced to one year in prison and 200 lashes in the conservative Muslim kingdom, a Saudi newspaper reported on Tuesday.

"Investigations revealed the Lebanese had been practicing this job for nine years," said al-Madina.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Sunday hailed an emergency $100 million donation received from Saudi Arabia after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited the kingdom last week.

"Prime minister Salam Fayyad and the Palestinian people thank... King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz after he instructed the Saudi finance ministry to transfer $100 million to the Palestinian Authority treasury at the request of president Mahmud Abbas," Fayyad's office said.

Petrol bombs were thrown during the night by unknown attackers at a parking lot of a Saudi Arabian court in the kingdom's unrest-hit Shiite-populated east, an official and witnesses said on Sunday.

They said the bombs were thrown in the parking lot outside the compound of the court in Qatif district, setting the plastic shades that covered the area on fire.

Saudi Arabia has hit out at a Russian official for his remarks on unrest in the kingdom's east, saying his comments were a "blatant interference" in its internal affairs, a report said.

It accused Konstantin Dolgov, Russian Foreign Ministry's commissioner for human rights, of diverting attention from the "massacres" that were being committed by Moscow's ally, Damascus, in Syria.

A gunman was killed during an attack on a police station as four Saudi policemen were wounded in a separate assault on their patrols in the kingdom's Shiite-populated east, state media reported.

"Four masked gunmen on motorbikes entered al-Awamiya police center where one of them threw a petrol bomb while the rest opened fire at the station," interior ministry spokesman Mansur al-Turki said, quoted by SPA news agency.