Police have detained 13 people during a series of raids in southeastern Turkey over their suspected ties to the al-Qaida network, Anatolia news agency reported on Monday.

Police arrested the suspects during simultaneous raids at 15 different addresses in southeastern Anatolian province of Gaziantep, Anatolia said.

The young man tipped to be North Korea's next leader and propel the Kim dynasty into a third generation is even more of an enigma than his mercurial father Kim Jong-Il, who has died at the age of 69.

North Korean state media on Monday urged people to pledge allegiance to Kim's youngest son and heir apparent Kim Jong-Un, aged in his late 20s, after the stunning announcement that his father had died on Saturday.

Minutes after the announcement of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il’s death, the world leaders were on alert on Monday urging Pyongyang to engage with the global community.

The United States swiftly closed ranks with its ally South Korea, as President Barack Obama called his close friend President Lee Myung-Bak of South Korea at midnight on the U.S. east coast, as Washington and its regional allies digested the death of the Stalinist state's volatile 69-year-old leader.

Twin suicide bombers on a motorcycle struck an Afghan market in the southern province of Nimroz on Monday, killing themselves but causing no other casualties, officials said.

The interior ministry said the attackers with "suicide-loaded vests" blew up their motorcycle at around 8:50 am (04:20 GMT) in the Haji Zahid market of Dilaram district, but that "fortunately nobody was killed or injured".

Hope was running out Monday for scores of oil workers missing for more than a day in remote, freezing waters off Russia's east coast after their floating platform capsized and sank during a severe storm.

Maria Dubrovskya, spokeswoman for the Emergencies Ministry in Russia's Far East, said rescue workers have pulled out seven bodies from the Sea of Okhotsk. Russian news agencies are reporting that more bodies have been seen in the water, but the rescue team has not been able to retrieve them.

The United States, its European allies and key Arab states are intensifying talks on how to maintain stability in the global energy markets in case of a formal embargo on Iran's oil exports and its central bank, The Wall Street Journal reported late Sunday.

Citing unnamed U.S. and European officials, the newspaper said such an embargo would constitute the most direct economic confrontation yet between Iran and the West.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that his government is negotiating the terms of a long-term U.S. presence in his country that could involve U.S. troops.

The United States is withdrawing 10,000 troops this year, leaving 91,000 on the ground into next year. Another 23,000 are due to leave by the end of September.

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari returned home on Monday following medical treatment in Dubai, an official said, nearly a fortnight after leaving the country in the midst of a major scandal.

A special flight carrying Zardari, his daughter and personal staff landed at an air force base in the port city of Karachi, the home minister of Sindh province, Manzoor Wasan, told Agence France Presse.

The United States was Sunday "closely monitoring" reports on North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's death and said it was committed to stability on the Korean peninsula and the security of its allies.

Kim's death, announced by North Korea's official media, posed an immediate and grave foreign policy crisis for Washington and its allies, given Pyongyang's history of belligerence and its nuclear arsenal.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has died aged 69 of a heart attack, state media announced Monday, plunging the impoverished but nuclear-armed nation into uncertainty amid a second dynastic succession.

The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the leader "passed away from a great mental and physical strain" at 8:30 am on Saturday (23:30 GMT Friday), while on a train for one of his "field guidance" tours.