President Francois Hollande will visit French troops deployed in the Central African Republic on Friday and meet with the interim president of the troubled former colony, his office said.

Hollande will have talks with Catherine Samba Panza, address some of the soldiers and also meet with religious leaders during a brief stopover in the capital Bangui on his way back from Nigeria, where he is attending a summit with African leaders.

A group of Pakistanis jailed in Spain in 2009 over a plot to bomb the Barcelona metro protested their innocence Thursday, claiming they were framed by a corrupt witness.

Jan Khan, the legal consultant for the men, said they wanted to clear their names of the terror charges.

North Korea test-fired four short-range missiles into the sea Thursday, Seoul's defense ministry said, in an apparent show of force to coincide with South Korea-U.S. joint military exercises.

A ministry spokesman told Agence France Presse the missiles, with an estimated range of 200 kilometers (125 miles), were fired off the east coast of North Korea.

Security issues threatened to overtake the festivities as President Francois Hollande arrived in Nigeria on Thursday for centenary celebrations, as calls mount for French help against Islamist Boko Haram militants.

Just hours before Hollande touched down, hundreds of suspected militant fighters laid siege to a town in Adamawa state in northeast Nigeria, destroying scores of homes and businesses with heavy weaponry and explosives.

Mobs rioted in the Guinean capital Conakry and in a mining town further north over the deaths of two teenagers in separate incidents, police and witnesses told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

A policeman in Fria, around 150 kilometers (93 miles) north of the capital, said hundreds of youths "armed with sticks, clubs and even knives looted, ransacked and set fire to the police station" and two local government buildings on Wednesday.

Gunmen shot dead a Shiite Muslim scholar in central Karachi as he traveled on a busy road on Thursday, police said, in what appeared to be a sectarian attack.

Allama Taqi Hadi Naqvi, a cleric who was also an employee of the government educational board, was targeted as he returned home in a rickshaw.

Ukraine's parliament on Thursday approved the nomination of pro-EU Arseniy Yatsenyuk as the crisis-hit country's new prime minister until presidential polls are held in May.

Yatsenyuk was one of the most prominent leaders of the three-month anti-government protests that swept Ukraine, culminating in deadly violence last week that precipitated the ouster of president Viktor Yanukovych and the collapse of his entire government.

Thailand's premier skipped an anti-corruption panel hearing Thursday into negligence charges that could lead to her ousting, as her government turned to the UN for help resolving a deadly political crisis.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is fighting for her political survival as pressure mounts on several fronts -- in mass protests on the streets, in the courts and from the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC).

Scores of suspected Boko Haram Islamists armed with grenade launchers and explosives razed a town in Nigeria's embattled northeast, killing two people, including a child, witnesses told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

Residents in Michika, in Adamawa state, said people fled to the nearby foothills when the attackers dressed in military uniforms stormed the town in four-wheeled drive trucks and motorcycles.

The junior party in Cyprus's governing coalition pulled out early Thursday over disagreement with President Nicos Anastasiades on his handling of new peace talks with the Turkish Cypriots.

In a marathon session that began on Wednesday and ended before dawn, the centre-right DIKO party's leadership decided by 97 votes to 81 to withdraw from the administration.