The United States plans to keep up its sanctions regime against Iran, even as it seeks a diplomatic solution over Tehran's suspect nuclear program, a senior U.S. official said Thursday.

International sanctions over what the West says is a nuclear weapons program have badly hit Iran's economy and its leaders have made it clear they are looking for relief.

Italian rescue divers on Thursday found 40 bodies under and inside the wreck of a migrant boat that sank off the island of Lampedusa, which would bring the toll in the disaster to 133 dead.

The ANSA news agency quoted coast guards as saying the boat was on the seabed at a depth of around 40 meters (130 feet).

The Colombian government resumed peace talks with leftist rebels Thursday in a renewed bid to end nearly half a century of armed conflict.

Negotiations, which began in November, picked up again in the Cuban capital Havana following a two-week break.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro canceled plans to travel to Bolivia for a regional summit Thursday, saying he has fallen ill with the flu.

"I regret not to have been able to travel to our sister nation Bolivia -- a bout of the flu has prevented me," Maduro tweeted.

Guinea's main opposition parties on Thursday withdrew representatives overseeing the counting of votes in a legislative election they have said was riddled with fraud, calling the process a "joke".

"We have asked our representatives at the national commission of vote centralization to withdraw," former prime minister and opposition coalition spokesman Sidya Toure told Agence France Presse.

Belgium extradited a Tunisian former professional footballer turned convicted al-Qaida fighter to the United States on Thursday, the justice minister said.

Nizar Trabelsi, who was arrested just two days after the September 11 attacks in 2001, was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2003 for plotting a suicide truck bombing against a Belgian air base where American troops are stationed.

The European Court of Human Rights on Thursday ordered Russia to pay 1.2 million euros ($1.6 million) to the families of 18 people killed when it bombed a Chechen village in 2000.

The court ruled in favor of 13 residents of Aslanbek-Sheripovo, a village in the southern Russian republic which has fought two brutal separatist wars with Russia since 1994.

A former Islamist warlord who trained the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks entered Afghanistan's presidential election race on Thursday, triggering alarm among Western diplomats.

Abdul Rasul Sayyaf registered his papers at the Independent Election Commission offices in Kabul and vowed to serve the nation as U.S.-led NATO troops prepare to withdraw after 12 years of war.

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Angelino Alfano on Thursday called for European assistance in dealing with an influx of refugees, saying it was "a European tragedy, not just an Italian one".

"The toll is unfortunately a tragic one, with 93 victims including three children and two pregnant," he said at a press conference in Rome.

Pakistan is still keen to pursue dialogue with Taliban militants, the government's top national security adviser said Thursday, despite a spate of bloody attacks in the country's northwest.

Three bombings in the space of a week in the city of Peshawar killed more than 140 people, most of them civilians, prompting many to question a government plan to seek peace with the militants.