Severe weather conditions forced specialist alpine rescuers to abandon attempts Sunday to recover the bodies of seven people killed when their sightseeing helicopter crashed into a New Zealand glacier.

Police described conditions on the Fox Glacier, a popular tourist site on the west coast of the South Island, as "dangerous" and said it could take two or three days to retrieve all of the victims.

Hong Kong went to the polls Sunday for the first time since huge pro-democracy protests gripped the city, in a key test of public sentiment.

The spotlight is on the district elections to gauge whether support for the democracy movement can translate into votes and bring change to the political landscape.

French police on Saturday freed seven people arrested during a massive raid on an apartment housing the ringleader of the Paris attacks, prosecutors said.

However Jawad Bendaoud, who has admitted lending the apartment to two people from Belgium "as a favour" but denied knowing any more, is being held in custody.

Paris has extended a ban on public gatherings introduced after the terror attacks in the French capital until November 30, the start of U.N. climate talks, the city's police headquarters said Saturday.

In a statement the prefecture recalled the "extreme seriousness" of last week's attacks, which left 130 people dead and prompted the government to put in place a three-month state of emergency. 

A 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Indonesia Saturday, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said, but no tsunami warning was issued and no immediate damage or casualties were reported.

The undersea quake was recorded at a depth of 67 kilometers (42 miles) near Indonesia's Babar islands, according to USGS.

Turkey has detained a Belgian citizen of Moroccan origin on suspicion of links to the Paris attacks, the Dogan news agency reported on Saturday.

Ahmet Dahmani, 26, is accused of conducting reconnaissance work to choose the sites for the attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and were claimed by Islamic State (IS) jihadists, the report said. 

Two top Bangladesh opposition leaders who are expected to be hanged within days sought clemency from the president Saturday in a last-ditch attempt to escape the gallows, the country's justice minister said.

Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, facing execution for their roles in Bangladesh's 1971 independence war with Pakistan have sent mercy pleas to the home ministry, Anisul Huq told Agence France Presse.

Investigators in Mali were on Saturday hunting at least three people suspected of links to the jihadist siege at a luxury hotel in the capital that left at least 19 people dead.

The government has declared a state of emergency after the bloody nine-hour hostage-taking at the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako on Friday, exactly a week after the Paris massacre.

President Vladimir Putin condemned Friday's jihadist attack on a hotel in Mali that killed 21 people including several Russians, the Kremlin and a foreign ministry spokeswoman said on Saturday.

In a message to Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, Putin "stressed that the inhuman crime committed in Mali's capital again confirms that terrorism knows no borders and is a real danger for the whole world," the Kremlin said in a statement.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel on Saturday said the decision to raise the terror threat level in the capital Brussels to the highest possible level was linked to an imminent threat of attacks.

Brussels shut its metro system, cancelled public events and urged residents to stay away from crowded areas, with a gunman still on the run after the Paris attacks which have sent jitters through Europe.