At least 232 people died early Sunday when a fire tore through a nightclub packed with university students in the southern Brazilian city of Santa Maria, police said.

Shocked survivors described a frantic rush to the exits as flames swept through the crowded club in the university town, with scores of young people getting trampled and passing out from smoke inhalation.

Outgoing African Union chairman Thomas Boni Yayi told African leaders Sunday their response to the conflict in Mali had been too slow, and thanked France for taking the lead in its military intervention in the country.

Boni Yayi, Benin's president, told leaders at the opening of the 54-member AU summit that the body's response had taken too long, and that France's action was something "we should have done a long time ago to defend a member country.”

Two people were missing and the body of a third person was recovered from raging floodwaters as severe storms pounded northeastern Australia on Sunday, forcing more than 1,000 to flee their homes.

Army aircraft were deployed in the northern state of Queensland, where storms generated by former tropical cyclone Oswald unleashed punishing rains and localized tornadoes and floodwaters threatened several major towns.

French fighter jets bombed the far northern Islamist stronghold of Kidal in Mali and destroyed the home of the head of an al-Qaida-linked group, a security source said.

"There were air raids on Islamist bases in Kidal," 1,500 kilometers (940 miles) north of the capital Bamako, a Malian security source said, adding that the home of Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith) chief Iyad Ag Ghaly was destroyed.

Japan Sunday launched two satellites to strengthen its surveillance capabilities, including keeping a closer eye on North Korea which has vowed to stage another nuclear test.

One of them was a radar-equipped unit to complete a system of surveillance satellites that will allow Tokyo to monitor any place in the world at least once a day.

Suspected communist insurgents ambushed a truck carrying police and village guards in an attack which left nine people dead and wounded at least six in the central Philippines on Sunday, an official said.

The police and village guards were returning from securing a town festival in the central island of Negros before dawn when about 30 heavily-armed gunmen opened fire on them, said Chief Inspector Rico Santotome.

Eight police officers and three detainees were killed when their vehicle was blown up by a powerful homemade bomb in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, officials said Sunday.

The incident happened late Saturday -- the same day that a suicide bomber killed 10 policemen in the northern city of Kunduz, taking the toll to 18 in a single day.

President Hugo Chavez has beaten a severe respiratory infection that occurred after his latest cancer surgery in Cuba, Venezuelan Communications Minister Ernesto Villegas said Saturday in Santiago.

"The respiratory infection has been overcome, though there still is some degree of breathing difficulty that is being treated appropriately," he said on the sidelines of a regional summit with European Union leaders in the Chilean capital.

Hacker group Anonymous said it disabled the U.S. Sentencing Commission's website Saturday in revenge for the death of Internet freedom advocate Aaron Swartz, and vowed to release government data.

The website of the commission, an independent agency of the U.S. Justice Department involved in sentencing, was apparently hacked into early Saturday.

Thousands of people marched in Washington on Saturday to demand stronger gun control legislation, in a solemn rally six weeks after the shock massacre of young children at a Connecticut school.

Protesters, backed by senior officials, marched in silence for around 30 minutes along the National Mall near the U.S. Capitol and Washington Monument, carrying white placards marked with the names and pictures of gun crime victims.