Strife-torn Central African Republic is on the brink of a far deeper crisis, a senior U.N. aid official warned Friday, as the country's new rulers defended their human rights record.

"The situation is critical and requires our urgent attention. We have been very heavily focused on Syria, and the Sahel, which is of course understandable, but this is a place which requires our full support," said Ted Chaiban, emergencies director at the world body's children's agency UNICEF.

EU leaders said Friday they are ready to sign a landmark association accord with Ukraine but it must first meet conditions, including the release of jailed former premier Yulia Tymoshenko.

The 28 European Union leaders meeting in Brussels said in a statement they looked forward to the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius next month when the accord is supposed to be signed.

Mozambique's former rebel movement Renamo said Friday one of its lawmakers was killed in a raid on its military base by government troops earlier in the week.

The statement came after Renamo, which fought a bloody civil war against the ruling Frelimo party before transforming into a political party, declared that a 1992 peace deal was over.

A Ukrainian student was jailed for a minimum of 40 years by a British court on Friday for murdering a Muslim grandfather and planting bombs near three mosques as part of what police called a racist terror campaign.

Pavlo Lapshyn, 25, had pleaded guilty on Monday to stabbing 82-year-old Mohammed Saleem to death as he walked home from a mosque in the central English city of Birmingham in April.

British Prime Minister David Cameron says shared intelligence with the U.S. has benefited EU states as an eavesdropping row pushes France and Germany to demand a new code of conduct on data-gathering.

Cameron said Friday he had passed on to European partners information gleaned from intelligence in cooperation with U.S. and other allies that had helped avert terror plots.

Serbia accused Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday of meddling in the country's affairs after the Turkish Prime Minister said that "Kosovo is Turkey" during a recent visit to the former Serbian province.

Kosovo broke away from Serbia in 2008 but Belgrade still refuses to recognize its independence.

Nigeria's army said Friday it had killed 74 suspected Boko Haram fighters in a raid in northeastern Borno state, as gunmen from the Islamist group battled security forces in a neighboring area.

The army, which is battling to crush a four-year Islamist uprising in Nigeria, said it deployed bombs and ground troops to destroy insurgent camps in Borno on Thursday.

A Spanish court on Friday freed a second convict of the Basque militant group ETA and had 51 further appeals for liberty pending under a controversial European rights ruling.

The country's National Court ordered the release of Juan Manuel Piriz Lopez, who has served nearly 30 years of a 61-year sentence for killing an ex-member and shooting at two policemen in 1984.

DNA tests confirmed Friday a Bulgarian Roma couple living in dire poverty as the biological parents of Maria, a mystery blond girl discovered last week in a Greek Roma camp.

"DNA samples showed that Sasha Ruseva is the biological mother and Atanas Rusev is the biological father of the child called Maria," Bulgaria's interior ministry chief of staff Svetlozar Lazarov told reporters.

Suspected Boko Haram Islamists attacked police in the northeast Nigerian city of Damaturu, prompting a fierce gunfight with troops, a police officer and residents said Friday.

The gunmen late Thursday stormed the city in coordinated raids, burning at least four police buildings and leaving an unspecified number of casualties, said a senior police officer, who requested anonymity.