Gunmen killed six Kenyans including four policemen in the latest of a string of attacks in the northeastern border region with war-torn Somalia, police said Thursday.

Two other policemen were wounded in the attack some 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Somalia -- an area hit by a series of blasts in the three months since Nairobi sent troops into Somalia to fight Islamist Shebab insurgents.

Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents warned Thursday that their support of peace talks did not mean they had given up fighting or accepted the constitution of the "stooge" government in Kabul.

The comments came as the United States announced that it would send a senior official to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai next week to see whether he agrees to a resumption of preliminary talks with the Taliban.

Russia on Wednesday said a military attack on Iran would be a "grave mistake" that will reverberate across the world, calling for utmost restraint in the West's escalating tensions with Tehran.

Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov also slammed oil sanctions against his country's traditional ally, saying they had only hampered nuclear negotiations in the past.

The European Union's home affairs commissioner urged U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday to fulfill his promise to close Guantanamo, calling the continued detention of prisoners "a disgrace".

Marking 10 years since the U.S. naval base in Cuba received its first terror suspects, Cecilia Malstroem wrote on Twitter that it was "A disgrace that prisoners are still held w/o trial."

EU foreign ministers meeting later this month to decide on new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear drive will be briefed by Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, EU sources said Wednesday.

At the talks on January 23, Davutoglu will inform the European Union's 27 ministers about the substance of his trip to Iran earlier this month, the sources said.

Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani sacked his defense secretary Wednesday for "gross misconduct" in triggering a row between the army and civilian leadership, a senior government official told Agence France Presse.

"Prime minister has terminated the contract of defense secretary Naeem Khalid Lodhi for gross misconduct," he said. State media said he had been fired "for creating misunderstanding between the state institutions".

The police chief of Afghanistan's troubled Kandahar province Wednesday survived a suicide bombing just behind his fortified office, officials said.

The militant wearing an explosives-packed vest and posing as a civilian visitor had made it to the waiting room of General Abdul Raziq's office before detonating.

Unidentified men attacked the main United Nations compound in the Somali capital Mogadishu, hurling two hand grenades that exploded near the wall, U.N. officials and witnesses said Wednesday.

According to witnesses, two grenades struck by the roadside next to the wall of the U.N. compound late Tuesday. Security guards in the compound opened fire in response, but no casualties were reported.

China on Wednesday called on Iran and the U.N. atomic watchdog to cooperate over a new uranium enrichment plant, amid mounting international tensions over Tehran's nuclear program.

The comments came as U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met Chinese leaders to try to press the case for sanctions on Iran, which Beijing -- a key consumer of Iranian oil -- has repeatedly opposed.

North Korea said Wednesday that before Kim Jong Il's death the United States offered to provide food aid if it halted its uranium enrichment program, and although Pyongyang blasted Washington for "politicizing" food shipments, it appeared to leave the door open for a deal.

Comments about the proposed deal, attributed to an unidentified Foreign Ministry spokesman in Pyongyang, carried an indignant tone, but the North's statement also said it would wait and "see if the United States has a willingness to establish confidence" with North Korea.