At least five South Sudanese workers were killed after attackers stormed their compound in the key Unity oil field, an official in the Chinese-owned company said Thursday, amid wider violence wracking the young nation.

"A group of armed men came to the compound and killed staff" late on Wednesday, a senior official at the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC) said, not wanting to give his name as he was not authorized to speak to the media.

President Vladimir Putin announced Thursday that he would pardon ex-oil tycoon and bitter Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a move that should see Russia's most famous prisoner freed after more than a decade behind bars.

The shock announcement could finally draw the curtain on the most notorious legal case in post-Soviet Russian history and came as Russia comes under even greater international scrutiny in the run-up to the Winter Olympic Games in February.

Two Muslim fanatics were found guilty Thursday of murdering a British soldier whom they butchered in broad daylight on a London street.

Lee Rigby was knocked down by a car and then nearly decapitated as Michael Adebolajo, 29, and Michael Adebowale, 22, hacked him to death with a meat cleaver and knives outside his barracks on May 22.

The Istanbul police chief has been dismissed after dozens of people including the sons of cabinet ministers were detained in a sweeping graft probe, media reports said Thursday.

Huseyin Capkin, who had been at his post since June 2009, is the latest of 30 senior police officers to be sacked in Istanbul and Ankara for "abusing their power".

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday described U.S. surveillance programs as a necessity to fight terrorism but also expressed admiration for fugitive Edward Snowden over his leaking of the schemes.

Speaking during his marathon annual press conference, Putin denied he had ever met former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Snowden who now has refugee status in Russia.

Bangladesh security forces arrested more than 100 protesters on Thursday as they launched a nationwide crackdown on the opposition ahead of the controversial January 5 general election.

Officials said the protesters were detained in joint operations by the police, the elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and paramilitary border guards amid a series of transport blockades called by opposition parties which are boycotting the polls.

Pakistani troops Thursday mounted helicopter and mortar attacks on militants in the lawless northwest, where officials said 33 insurgents and three civilians have been killed.

The violence in North Waziristan tribal district came a day after a suicide bombing at a military checkpoint killed five soldiers and wounded 34 others.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych Thursday told the West to stay out of his country's political crisis, after top European and U.S. diplomats visited the protests that have raged for a month in central Kiev.

In the first live interview with Ukraine's main television channels since the crisis broke last month, Yanukovych said a bailout deal with Moscow did not contravene Kiev's EU hopes but said Ukraine could still join clauses of a rival Kremlin-led trade bloc.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and his Irish counterpart Enda Kenny toured World War I sites in Belgium on Thursday, deepening ties in remembrance of Irish soldiers who fought alongside Britons at the height of the Dublin insurrection.

The visit to the former Western Front in the Flanders region included a stop at the Island of Ireland Peace Park at Messines, a memorial to 50,000 Irish war dead.

The U.S. envoy to the United Nations was in Central African Republic Thursday to urge political and religious leaders to end brutal violence, warning the people were "in profound danger".

Samantha Power is the highest-level U.S. official to visit the CAR, which has plunged into anarchy with sectarian violence that has killed hundreds of people.