Deadly attacks by militants in Paris and other Western cities underline the need for a "global response" to the Islamic State jihadist group, U.S. envoy John Allen said on Wednesday.

"As we saw so tragically in Paris last week, Iraq is on the front lines of a global conflict," Allen said at a news conference in Baghdad, referring to attacks by gunmen on satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket that killed a total of 17 people.

The death toll from a stray rocket that hit a Ukrainian bus climbed to 12 on Wednesday as Moscow and Kiev traded blame for the separatist war's bloodiest incident since a September truce.

The long-range Grad rocket exploded on Tuesday near a commuter bus traveling towards the pro-Russian rebel stronghold of Donetsk from Ukraine's southeast coast.

A Singaporean navy ship on Wednesday located the main body of the AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea late last month, raising hopes that bodies of most of the 162 victims will now be found.

Underwater photos showed the cracked fuselage and part of a wing of Flight QZ8501, that went down on December 28 in stormy weather during a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.

A Pakistani court on Wednesday indicted Pervez Musharraf over the 2006 killing of a separatist leader, the latest legal hurdle facing the former military ruler since his return from self-imposed exile two years ago.

The charges by the court in the southwestern city of Quetta are unlikely to cause any immediate problems for the 71-year-old, who has not attended a single hearing in the case since it began in 2013.

Italy's veteran President Giorgio Napolitano resigned Wednesday, setting the stage for the election of a new head of state, a thorny process which could prove a political headache for Matteo Renzi's government.

The 89-year old had announced in December that he would be leaving office well before the end of his term in 2020 because of his advancing age.

Al-Qaida in Yemen Wednesday claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo, saying it was ordered by the jihadist network's global chief to avenge the French magazine's cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

In a video entitled "A message regarding the blessed battle of Paris", al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said that it had financed and plotted the assault on the weekly that left 12 people dead and shocked France.

Rescuers were searching Wednesday for five fishermen missing after their boat capsized in rough seas off Portugal's Atlantic coast, rescue services said.

One of the six crew members was in stable condition in hospital after swimming from the wreck to a beach, fire service spokesman Luis Rector said.

Relatives of the 36 people killed in a New Year's Eve crush in Shanghai -- who are now closely supervised by the government -- have made a formal written demand for a proper account of the disaster, Agence France Presse has learned.

New Year revellers, many of them young women, were trampled after flocking to celebrations on Shanghai's historic waterfront known as the Bund, with severe overcrowding raising questions over why authorities failed to enforce stronger safety measures.

China has arrested 10 Turkish citizens and nine Uighurs over a plot to smuggle the members of the ethnic minority -- including a wanted "terrorist" -- out of the country, a state-run newspaper reported Wednesday.

Uighurs, who number around 10 million in China's violence-wracked Xinjiang region, are a Turkic-speaking and mostly Muslim ethnic minority who have long chafed under Chinese control.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet French President Francois Hollande on Friday to discuss the jihadist attacks that left 17 people dead last week in France.

The United States faced criticism after it failed to send a senior official to the massive rally in Paris on Sunday attended by dozens of world leaders condemning the bloodshed.