British Prime Minister David Cameron arrived Thursday in Sri Lanka ahead of a Commonwealth summit which is set to be overshadowed by his historic visit to the island's former war zone.

Cameron flew in to Colombo around midnight (1830 GMT) from neighboring India on the eve of the summit, according to a photographer at the airport.

Three people were killed Tuesday when suspected Maoist rebels triggered a landmine in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, police said.

The blast, which killed two security officials and a third person, came a day after voters defied threats from Maoist rebels to turn out for the first of five state elections in the country.

A Tibetan monk has set himself on fire in an act of protest in China, reports and campaign groups said Tuesday, as top Communist Party leaders hold a key gathering.

Tsering Gyal, 20, set himself alight on Monday in Guolou, a Tibetan area of Qinghai province in northwestern China, according to the US-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) and Radio Free Asia (RFA), which is funded by the US government.

India's Mars spacecraft was "successfully" raised into a higher orbit around Earth early on Tuesday, after a brief engine failure during an earlier attempt, the space agency said.

The Mars Orbiter Mission, which blasted off on November 5 for a 11-month trip to the Red Planet, is being launched on its way via an unusual "slingshot" method for interplanetary journeys.

India has yet to decide whether Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will attend a Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka amid mounting pressure on him to boycott the event, a foreign ministry official said Saturday.

The spokesman's statement came amid widespread Indian media reports that Singh would skip next week's meeting in Colombo.

Indian Hotels, an arm of the giant Tata Group, has abandoned a $1.2-billion offer to buy Orient-Express Hotels, marking its second unsuccessful attempt to purchase the Bermuda-based luxury global chain.

Indian Hotels Co Ltd (IHCL) made the unsolicited offer last October for Orient-Express, whose name comes from the iconic trans-European train, as it sought to boost its global hospitality presence.

India's Mars spacecraft has completed the first of a series of engine firings designed to free it from Earth's gravitational pull and propel it towards the Red Planet, scientists said Friday.

The first "orbit-raising manoeuvre", which involves the firing of a liquid fuel thruster, was performed Thursday followed by the second firing on Friday, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.

Suspected militants killed five policemen in an ambush in India's northeast on Tuesday, officials said, a day after separatists from the same group killed seven villagers.

Members of the outlawed Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA) attacked a police vehicle in the northeastern state of Meghalaya as officers were transferring one of their fellow rebels, who is on trial.

China and India began a joint anti-terrorism drill on Tuesday, the first such exercise by the Asian powers -- which have a sometimes-fraught relationship -- for five years.

The world's two most populous countries each sent one company of soldiers to Chengdu, in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, for the "Hand-in-Hand 2013" drill, according to Chinese state media reports.

Suspected militants, heavily armed and dressed in army fatigues, opened fire on villagers in restive northeast India, killing at least seven and wounding nine others, police officers said on Monday.

The rebels attacked the villagers late Sunday in Golapara district of Assam state, while they were playing cards during festivities to celebrate the Hindu holiday of Diwali, two senior officers said.