A magnitude 6.0 aftershock struck near the coast of Ecuador Thursday, as the country struggled to recover from a devastating quake that killed almost 600 people, U.S. experts said.

The tremor hit at 10:03 pm (0303 GMT Friday) some 20 miles (33 kilometers) north-northwest of Bahia de Caraquez and 36 miles north-northwest of Tosagua, the US Geological Survey said.

Anguished relatives nervously awaited news of their loved ones Thursday outside a Mexican petrochemical plant where an explosion killed at least 24 people and sent toxic smoke billowing into the air.

Starting at dawn, family members flocked to a military cordon set up around the plant after Wednesday's explosion, which blew out the windows of nearby stores and homes and triggered panic among locals still haunted by a deadly blast at the same facility 25 years ago.

Chad's veteran leader Idriss Deby has won a fifth term in office, the national electoral commission announced Thursday, extending his 26 years in power, as the opposition alleged widespread fraud.

Taking more than 60 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential polls, Deby came far ahead of main opposition leader Saleh Kebzabo, who won just over 12 percent but said the vote was rigged.

Amnesty International on Friday accused Nigeria's military of deliberately shooting dead more than 350 Shiite Muslims, burying them in mass graves and destroying evidence of the crime.

The rights group also dismissed as baseless army claims the protesters from the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) group wanted to kill the head of the army before the clashes last December.

Turkey's highest appeals court on Thursday overturned scores of convictions over an alleged coup plot against the government of then prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The court threw out an earlier verdict by an Istanbul court which saw many top military officers convicted, saying the original trial had failed to uncover proof of the alleged plot in 2003, media reports said.

President Barack Obama said Thursday that neither the United States nor Arab Gulf nations had an interest in conflict with Iran.

"Even with the nuclear deal we recognize collectively that we continue to have serious concerns about Iranian behavior", Obama said at the close of a summit in the Saudi capital with the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council.

NATO said Thursday it had no plans to wind up a mission to stop migrant traffickers in the Aegean Sea and warned smugglers were changing routes very quickly.

Alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg said traffickers were still trying to smuggle people from Turkey to Greece, despite the apparent success of an unprecedented naval mission by NATO to help tackle Europe's migration crisis.

Britain announced plans Thursday to take in up to 3,000 of the most vulnerable children and their families from conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa by 2020.

The scheme, drawn up in coordination with the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR), is aimed at children deemed at risk of child labor, forced marriage and other forms of abuse or exploitation.

Key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam was charged Thursday with attempted murder over a deadly shootout with police in Brussels a week before the suicide bombings in the Belgian capital, his lawyer and prosecutors said.

An Algerian Islamist suspect was killed and four police officers were wounded in the March 15 shooutout, which led to Abdeslam's arrest three days later after a massive European manhunt.

U.S. authorities have uncovered what they believe to be the longest ever cross-border drug trafficking tunnel connecting Mexico and California, a statement said.

Estimated to span more than 800 yards (730 meters), it contains an elevator, as well as lights and rail and ventilation systems, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of California said Wednesday.