French soldiers have killed about 40 Islamist fighters, including some senior commanders, in Mali in recent weeks, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Thursday.

"We have conducted operations over the past weeks," Le Drian said, adding that "about 40" fighters had been killed including "Ould Hamaha, a historic leader of AQIM," or al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

Spain searched Thursday for four missing crew from a military helicopter that crashed during exercises by the Canary Islands, which lie off the northwest coast of Africa.

Only one survivor has been found since the Super Puma helicopter crashed during exercises on Wednesday evening, an air force spokesman told Agence France Presse.

European leaders were on Thursday to debate biting economic sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea as Ukraine tore up key ties with the Kremlin and drew up plans to evacuate its nationals from the rebel peninsula.

The European Union is under intense pressure to find a credible response to an explosive security crisis on the 28-nation bloc's eastern frontier that NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Wednesday called "the gravest threat to European security and stability since the end of the Cold War."

A commuter train smashed into a minibus on a railway track in southern Turkey on Thursday, killing 10 people and injuring several others.

The bus, which was carrying workers to an industrial zone in the Mediterranean province of Mersin, was hit because the driver proceeded to cross the track "carelessly", the private Dogan News Agency reported, citing witnesses.

A Mumbai court convicted four men on Thursday over the gang-rape of a photographer on assignment in the city last year, a case that reignited nationwide anger over women's safety.

The court found the men guilty of raping the 22-year-old in August last year at an abandoned mill compound, where she had gone to take photos with a male colleague, close to an upscale area of the financial city.

Japan and North Korea are moving to restart formal government-level talks, a foreign ministry official said Thursday, after a shift over the contentious issue of Pyongyang's past abductions of Japanese citizens.

The step forward came as diplomats held informal talks on the sidelines of a two-day humanitarian meeting in the Chinese city of Shenyang between Red Cross officials from the two countries, the Japanese official said.

More than 10,000 U.S. troops will participate in a large-scale landing drill in South Korea next week, the U.S. military said Thursday, days after North Korea test-fired 25 projectiles in apparent protest at the continuing joint exercises.

The drill, code-named Ssang Yong ("Twin Dragons") and billed by local news media as one of the largest-ever of amphibious landing exercises by the two allies, will take place from March 27 through to April 7 on the southeast coast of South Korea.

Venezuela upped pressure on the opposition Wednesday after weeks of protests, arresting the mayor of the town where they started and seeking a probe of a prominent anti-government lawmaker.

Authorities said the death toll from the protests rose to at least 30 after a policeman died trying to break up a protest in the western city of San Cristobal, where the demos began February 4.

Protesters barricaded themselves inside Taiwan's parliament for a third straight day on Thursday, threatening "further action" if the government pushes ahead with its plans to ratify a contentious trade pact with China.

More than 200 protesters -- mostly young students -- stormed through security barriers and took over the parliament's main chamber late Tuesday in the first such occupation of the building in Taiwan's history.

Chinese prosecutors have detained on bribery charges a deputy chief of a village which attracted worldwide attention when it rebelled against its Communist leaders, a local government website said.

Hong Ruichao, one of the leaders of the 2011 uprising in the southern village of Wukan which saw locals drive out Communist Party officials accused of illegal land grabs, was held on Wednesday, according to the official blog of Lufeng city, which administers Wukan.