Six retired generals testified on Thursday in an Ankara court as part of an ongoing probe into the 1997 coup that ousted an Islamic-leaning government, local television reported.

They were summoned to testify a day after four ex-generals including a navy chief were detained pending trial for their alleged role in the coup, the latest development in a standoff between the military and Turkey's current Islamist-rooted government.

More than 8,500 refugees have fled the Central African Republic for the Democratic Republic of Congo since last week for fear of attacks by rebels, a Congolese official said Thursday.

Between February 7 and 13, "8,646 people have fled Mobaye", a Central African border town close to positions held by the rebel Seleka coalition, which signed a peace accord with the government last month, Willy Isekusu, local district commissioner for DR Congo's North Ubangi province, told Agence France Presse.

France said Thursday it was very concerned about Iran's "persistent refusal" to come clean about its nuclear program, which the West suspects is aimed at producing an atomic bomb.

The comment came after talks with Iran failed yet again to reach a deal on enhanced inspections of Tehran's nuclear program, two weeks before a major meeting with world powers.

Attackers threw petrol bombs at three churches in central Indonesia Thursday, in the latest assault on religious minorities in the world's biggest Muslim-populated nation.

Police in the south of Sulawesi island reported three consecutive attacks between one and four in the morning, national police spokesman Agus Riyanto told reporters.

Boncana Amadou, the 93-year-old chief of the village of Kadji in northern Mali, points a worn finger toward the Niger river and a strip of land down the middle that locals call "Fundamentalist Island".

"Do you see that there?" Amadou says. "Those are Malian fundamentalists living there, and they've been sheltering Islamists from MUJAO."

Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday called for "real renewal" in the Church at an emotional farewell with priests from his Rome diocese where he said he would be "hidden from the world" once he resigns.

"We must work for the realization of the real Council and for a real renewal of the Church," the pope said in a rare off-the-cuff speech about his experiences as a young reformer at the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s.

Two people died on Thursday after suffering injuries in violent clashes between police and Islamists earlier in the week during protests over war crimes trials in Bangladesh.

The demonstrators have been demanding a halt to the trials of opposition Jamaat-e-Islami party leaders for crimes including genocide and rape they are alleged to have committed during the 1971 war of independence against Pakistan.

Two Nigerian journalists and a cleric were granted bail on Thursday after being charged over a controversial radio program on polio vaccines days before deadly attacks on polio clinics.

Gunmen attacked two polio clinics in the northern city of Kano on February 8, killing at least 10 people, after Wazobia FM broadcast a story on claims of forced vaccinations.

An immigrant from Ivory Coast set himself on fire in Rome airport on Thursday after receiving a deportation order, sparking panic among passengers in the busy terminal, Italian media reported.

A police officer quickly put out the flames with a fire extinguisher but the man was badly burnt and has been hospitalized in a serious condition.

The chief U.N. atomic inspector said Thursday that talks with Iran had failed again to reach a deal on agreeing enhanced inspections of Tehran's nuclear program, and that no new meeting had been set.

"We had discussions on the structured approach document but could not finalize the document," Herman Nackaerts of the International Atomic Energy Agency told reporters at Vienna airport after returning from Tehran.