The U.N. Security Council on Friday strongly condemned the "heinous" attack and hostage-taking at an Algerian gas complex by al-Qaida linked militants.

A statement agreed by the 15-member council stressed the need to bring the al-Qaida linked attackers and their backers to justice.

The United States said Friday it was "deeply disappointed" by Iran's response to a team from the U.N. nuclear agency, criticizing Tehran's reluctance to provide access to a sensitive site.

"We are obviously deeply disappointed that Iran has once again missed an opportunity to cooperate with the IAEA," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Prosecutors on Friday accused Ukraine's jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko of organizing the 1996 murder of a powerful lawmaker and warned that a guilty verdict could put her behind bars for life.

Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka said the fiery 52-year-old has been informed by prosecutors she and another former prime minister detained in the United States are now formal suspects in the murder of deputy Yevgen Shcherban.

A former top U.N. official in Sudan on Friday warned that "ethnic cleansing" is going on in the southern part of Sudan, where the people are suffering from hunger, disease and bombing in two war-torn states.

Just back from a trip to Blue Nile and South Kordofan states, where conflict between rebels and Sudanese government forces has raged for over a year, Mukesh Kapila called on the international community to come to the aid of the some 1.5 million people living in these states that border South Sudan.

Turkish police have arrested 13 suspects accused of plotting an attack against members of a Protestant church and their pastor in a northwestern city, a local official said on Friday.

"The suspects who were arrested by the counter-terrorism units on Tuesday are accused of plotting an attack on the members of the Christian community and their leader" in the city of Izmit, the official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will visit Germany, France and Britain early next month for wide-ranging talks at the start of President Barack Obama's new administration, the White House said Friday.

"At all stops, the vice president will discuss with key leaders a full range of bilateral, regional and global issues," the White House said in a statement.

Algerian special forces have freed nearly 650 hostages from Islamist gunmen at a remote gas plant near the Libyan border, but some 60 foreigners are still missing, national media said on Friday.

"Nearly 650 hostages seized in the attack carried out on Wednesday by a terrorist group... among them 573 Algerians and more than half of the 132 foreign hostages, were freed" by Algerian special forces, the APS news agency reported.

The brother of al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri joined dozens of Egyptian Islamists in a protest Friday near the French embassy in Cairo against French intervention in Mali.

Mohammed al-Zawahiri took part in the demonstration during which protesters accused Paris of being "at war against Islam".

"Terrorists" who attack U.S. interests have no place to hide, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Friday as fears grew for dozens of foreigners taken hostage by Islamists at a gas plant in Algeria.

"Terrorists should be on notice that they will find no sanctuary, no refuge. Not in Algeria, not in north Africa, not anywhere," Panetta said in a speech at Kings College London university.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said he would attend an emergency summit of the west African bloc ECOWAS on Saturday to help accelerate the deployment of an African military force in Mali.

"I will go there with a military attache and we will see with our African friends how we can speed up the deployment of MISMA (the International Mission for Mali Assistance)," he told AFP.