The Philippines has called home its ambassador to China for consultations, the foreign department said Thursday amid fresh tensions in a long-running maritime territorial dispute.

Foreign department spokesman Raul Hernandez announced ambassador Erlinda Basilio's trip after the defense department accused China of laying 75 concrete blocks on the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea.

A bomb wounded 11 people, mostly children, when it exploded outside a Pakistani girls' school on Thursday, a doctor said.

The bomb went off at the end of the school day as pupils walked into a street lined with fabric shops in the northwestern town of Bannu, which has been a flashpoint for Islamist militancy.

Flash floods and landslides in northern Vietnam have left at least eight people dead and 10 missing as homes were swept away, disaster officials said Thursday.

Heavy rain of up to 170 millimeters (6.7 inches) was recorded in the mountainous provinces of Ha Giang, Lai Chau and Lao Cai late on Wednesday, according to the flood and storm control department.

An Indian oil tanker seized by Iran in August for allegedly polluting Gulf waters has been allowed to leave the port where it was held, an Iranian official said Thursday.

The Indian government-owned MT Desh Shanti was on its way back to India with a load of Iraqi crude when the Iranian navy stopped it last month for allegedly polluting the waters.

Tropical storm Gabrielle has formed in the Caribbean, threatening parts of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic with heavy rains, the National Hurricane Center said late Wednesday.

The Miami-based center said the storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph).

New explorable images from the Japanese coast devastated by an enormous tsunami have been posted online, allowing web users to see how the disaster changed the area.

The images, on Google's Street View, include pictures of towns and villages near the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant where radiation levels are still too high for people to return.

Afghanistan's intelligence agency said Thursday that its spies shot dead two Pakistanis who opened fire on Afghan worshippers before dawn at a Shiite Muslim mosque in Kabul.

"Around 5 am, two Pakistani terrorists in Afghan police uniforms armed with AK-47s and pistols wanted to carry out an attack on Afghan worshippers in west Kabul," it said in a statement.

About 50 to 100 Afghan soldiers are killed in battle every week but the high casualty rate does not mean the country's forces are at the breaking point, a U.S. general said Wednesday.

"The Afghan security forces are suffering more casualties, no question about it," Lieutenant General Mark Milley said by video link from Afghanistan.

Campaigners urged Pakistan Wednesday to put pressure on the United States to free around 60 foreigners held without charge at Bagram prison before NATO troops leave Afghanistan next year.

The foreigners, suspected Islamist fighters who include around 40 Pakistanis, some Saudis and Kuwaitis, were exempt when the United States handed final responsibility for more than 3,000 detainees at Bagram to Afghan authorities in March.

M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo are enforcing a curfew in areas under their control, the U.N. peacekeeping mission said Wednesday, calling the move "completely unacceptable".

MONUSCO spokesman Felix Basse said U.N. troops were monitoring the situation in the area of the resource-rich east of the country controlled by the rebels during the current lull in fighting.