French troops had to call for air backup to fight off an assault by well-armed militants in the Central African Republic on Monday in clashes that left several gunmen dead, the military chief of staff in Paris said.

Around 40 heavily-armed militants riding motorcycles and pick-up trucks attacked the French peacekeepers on a road leading to the village of Boguila in the northwest of the strife-torn country, a spokesman told AFP.

Nepalese police were searching for a husband and his parents after they allegedly set his pregnant wife on fire in a demand for dowry, an officer said Tuesday.

Police accuse Farid Sheikh and his parents of pouring kerosene over the 25-year-old woman, who was seven months pregnant, in an attempt to extort a motorbike and water buffalo from her family.

A diver died Tuesday while working at the scene of South Korea's ferry disaster, as investigators disclosed that the ship was carrying nearly four times its legal limit of cargo.

Lee Gwang-Wook, 53, suffered breathing difficulties after reaching a depth of 25 meters (82 feet), said coastguard spokesman Ko Myung-Suk.

The death toll from a military offensive in a flashpoint town in east Ukraine rose to at least 34, officials said Tuesday, amid fresh warnings of civil war and the shutdown of a major airport in the region.

"Chaos and the risk of civil war" are now looming in Ukraine, said French President Francois Hollande, reflecting a frantic European push under way for a diplomatic solution before it is too late.

A Chinese national has been seized in Malaysia's Borneo island by Filipino gunmen, a security official said Tuesday in the wake of tension between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing over missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Mohammad Mentek, director-general of security in the east of Malaysia's Sabah state, identified the victim as 34-year-old Yang Zai Lin, who worked as a manager at a fish farm.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon flew into South Sudan Tuesday to demand an end to a brutal civil war, with rival leaders defying peace efforts despite dire warnings of genocide and famine.

The visit, coming as rebels and government forces battle for control of a key oil town, is the latest major push for a ceasefire in the nearly five-month-old civil war, which has seen the world's youngest nation collapse amid a brutal cycle of war crimes.

An air and sea rescue mission scoured choppy waters near Hong Kong Tuesday in a desperate search for 11 crew still missing more than 24 hours after their Chinese cargo ship sank.

The Zhong Xing 2, which was laden with cement, went down after colliding with a container ship in the early hours of Monday just south of the island of Po Toi, on the edge of Hong Kong's maritime territory.

Six people were wounded in a knife attack at a Chinese train station Tuesday, after a string of violent episodes at transport hubs authorities blame on "terrorists" from the restive region of Xinjiang.

Chinese media reports said there were as many as four attackers in white caps -- often donned by Muslims -- at the station in the southern city of Guangzhou.

At least two militants were killed and two others were injured when a bomb exploded Tuesday in a restive Pakistani tribal region near the Afghan border, officials said.

The morning attack came as a group of militants were visiting the bazaar in Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, known as a stronghold of Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants. 

An elderly woman died and 23 other people were injured after a strong earthquake shook northern Thailand, an official said Tuesday, as aftershocks continued to rattle the mountainous region popular with tourists.

The 83-year-old woman died when a wall in her house collapsed after the 6.0-magnitude struck quake on Monday afternoon, according to an official at the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department in Bangkok.