Locals have recovered the remains of another 17 people who were killed in Nepal's Langtang trekking region in April when an earthquake triggered a massive avalanche, a senior official said Wednesday.

Shiva Ram Gelal, chief officer of the central Rasuwa district that forms part of Langtang, said that locals had informed authorities after they found the remains in the last week.

Italy on Wednesday invited Iran's President Hassan Rouhani to Rome for an official visit, as its foreign minister held talks in Tehran following last month's historic nuclear accord.

Paolo Gentiloni delivered the invitation from Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Rouhani's website reported, a week after France asked the moderate president to visit Paris in November.

EU governments have a duty to help the flood of migrants arriving in Europe and not cave in to "populist" demands to turn them back, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said Wednesday.

In an interview with Agence France Presse Wednesday, Juncker said he was disappointed that EU ministers had failed late last month to agree on how to distribute a total of 40,000 mostly Syrian and Eritrean migrants from overstretched Italy and Greece.

China came under mounting pressure Wednesday over its land reclamation in the South China Sea, with both the United States and Japan criticizing it for militarizing the disputed waters.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry raised the issue during a meeting with China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of a regional diplomatic gathering in Malaysia that has been dominated by tensions over the Chinese moves.

Pakistan's powerful army chief has said that ongoing efforts at talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban are the "only credible way" to bring peace to the region.

Negotiators for the two sides met in the Pakistani hill town of Murree last month for their first face-to-face meeting aimed at ending the Taliban insurgency, now in its 14th year.

At least 310 Kenyans have been killed and over 215,000 forced from their homes this year in ethnic violence in northern Kenya, the U.N. said Wednesday.

While violence between rival groups is common in Kenya's northern Rift Valley regions, the number killed and forced to flee in the first six months of this year is already the same as the total for all of 2014.

Japanese leader Shinzo Abe told U.S. Vice President Joe Biden he would have "serious concerns" if WikiLeaks claims Washington spied on Japanese politicians were true, and called for an investigation, a top official said Wednesday.

Tokyo's Cabinet spokesman Yoshihide Suga said Biden had apologised to the Japanese prime minister in a telephone call for "causing troubles", without confirming the spying claims.

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan hit a record high in the first half of 2015, the U.N. said Wednesday, as Afghan forces struggle to contain the spreading conflict six months after the NATO combat mission ended.

In a worrying trend, ground combat is causing more deaths and injuries than improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the U.N. said, adding that the conflict was taking a particularly heavy toll on women and children.

Tens of thousands of people huddled Wednesday in monasteries and other makeshift evacuation centers in remote areas of Myanmar cut off by deadly floods, as rescuers struggled to deliver desperately needed aid.

Heavy monsoon downpours have caused devastation across large parts of South and Southeast Asia in recent weeks, claiming hundreds of lives and displacing millions.

Suspected rebels killed two paramilitary soldiers and wounded another ten after attacking their convoy in disputed Indian Kashmir on Wednesday, a senior police officer said.

The militants fired on the convoy transporting Border Security Force (BSF) troops near the town of Udhampur, 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of the main city of Srinagar.