At least 23 Pakistani soldiers were killed on Saturday when their bus plunged into a ravine on the main Pakistan-China highway in the mountainous northern region, officials said.

The leader of a band of Filipino militants whose incursion in Malaysia has left scores dead has reportedly fled even as his own family insist he is still in the country.

The United States will bolster its defenses against a possible North Korean missile strike by deploying 14 more interceptors in Alaska, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday.

Late president Hugo Chavez was laid to rest at the headquarters of his failed 1992 coup attempt on Friday, a month before snap elections to pick his successor.

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans thronged the streets of Caracas on Friday to bid a final farewell to late president Hugo Chavez a month before elections to pick his successor.

Hundreds of Egyptians demonstrated in Cairo on Friday to press for the army to assume power in a country plagued by unrest and instability two years after a revolution which toppled president Hosni Mubarak.

Syria's air force launched new air strikes on Friday on rebel bastions near Damascus, as clashes raged in flashpoints across the country two years after the anti-regime uprising began, a watchdog said.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans to unveil plans Friday to bolster US missile defenses to counter a growing threat from nuclear-armed North Korea, an administration official said Friday.

A Palestinian who had been in a coma since inhaling tear gas at a protest last month died on Friday in hospital in the West Bank city of Ramallah, a medical official said.

A New York judge on Friday sentenced a young Algerian to 10 years in prison for conspiring to attack synagogues in the city, the Manhattan district attorney said.

North Korea's military fired short-range missiles into the East Sea (Sea of Japan) on Friday, Yonhap reported, at a time of heightened tensions following Pyongyang's recent nuclear test.

India's army chief said on Friday he opposed ending tough emergency laws in insurgency-hit areas of Kashmir and the northeast that offer security forces near complete legal immunity.

The Israeli army has arrested 10 Palestinians on suspicion of stonethrowing blamed for a road accident in which an Israeli woman and her three daughters were injured, a statement said Friday.

A massive roadside bomb killed three policemen in Thailand's restive south on Friday, an army spokesman said, a fortnight ahead of peace talks between Thai authorities and a rebel group.

A coordinated string of bombings and a brazen assault on a ministry near Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone have killed 18 people, adding to the 120,000 Iraq war victims tallied in a new study.

The US commander in Afghanistan has warned his troops face an increased threat of attack from militants and rogue Afghan forces after a series of inflammatory anti-US comments from President Hamid Karzai.

At least 116,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 4,800 coalition troops died in Iraq between the outbreak of war in 2003 and the US withdrawal in 2011, researchers estimate.

An Iranian fighter jet tried to intercept a US Predator drone over the Gulf but backed off after encountering two American military aircraft, the Pentagon said Thursday.

North Korea is likely to launch a provocative attack on South Korea this year, a top analyst said Thursday at the launch of his think tank's annual report on the world's military capabilities.

President Hamid Karzai on Thursday said he wanted to "correct" rather than damage US-Afghan relations, after a storm of protest over his recent anti-US remarks.