Sudanese riot police on Tuesday beat health workers who protested the relocation of the country's largest children's hospital, witnesses said.

About 300 medical staff gathered outside the downtown facility objecting to the planned move to South Khartoum, the witnesses said. Authorities are seeking to decentralize health facilities.

Seven French tourists, apparently three adults and four children, were kidnapped Tuesday by unidentified men in northern Cameroon, near the border with Nigeria, a source close to the French embassy in Yaounde said.

"Seven French tourists were captured today by men, apparently on motorbikes, in the Cameroonian locality of Dadanga on the frontier with Nigeria," the source said. "Clearly the tourists were returning from the Waza natural park."

Chancellor Angela Merkel will embark on a two-day visit to Turkey starting Sunday, her spokesman said, taking with her a delegation of German business chiefs and visiting German troops.

On February 24, Merkel will visit German military stationed in the southeastern city of Kahramanmaras, Steffen Seibert told a regular government briefing here.

A Turkish court released on Tuesday 10 pro-Kurdish politicians who were among hundreds, possibly thousands of people on trial accused of ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The court in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir freed the politicians on the grounds that the time they spent in custody had now exceeded any prison term they would serve if convicted, court sources told Agence France Presse.

Ivorian ex-president Laurent Gbagbo on Tuesday appeared before International Criminal Court judges who will decide whether there is enough evidence to try him for masterminding a bloody election standoff two years ago.

Presiding judge Silvia Fernandez de Gurmendi opened the confirmation of charges hearing while Gbagbo, the first former head of state before the court, greeted journalists and supporters in the gallery with a wave.

The German government said Tuesday it had approved sending up to 330 soldiers to help train the Malian army and support the French deployment in its battle against Islamists.

Up to 180 German soldiers have been earmarked for the European Union Training Mission (EUTM), formally approved by EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.

A tribal clash has claimed many casualties near the tense undemarcated border between Sudan and South Sudan, a source familiar with the incident said on Tuesday.

The violence occurred between nomadic Arab Misseriya cattle herders and members of the South Sudanese-based Nuer tribe west of the disputed Abyei region, said the source, an Abyei resident.

Eleven people including five policemen have been injured in the Bulgarian capital Sofia as anti-government protesters fought running battles with riot police and vandalized buildings and vehicles late Monday, officials said.

In the latest wave of anger against the government of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov sparked by sharply higher electricity prices, demonstrations were also held in around a dozen other cities across the European Union's poorest member.

French President Francois Hollande begins on Tuesday a one-day visit to Greece to express support for the recession-hit country's recovery efforts.

"The purpose of my visit is to bring France's support for Greece to succeed, and for Europe to advance with (Greece)," Hollande told leading Greek daily Ta Nea on Monday.

Insurgent attacks on Afghan government employees soared by 700 percent last year even as the overall 2012 civilian death toll from the war fell for the first time in six years, the U.N. said Tuesday.

Targeted killings of women in government service by Taliban-led insurgents were "particularly disturbing," the U.N. mission in Afghanistan said in its annual report on civilian casualties.