Britain said Saturday it believed there was a heightened threat of "terrorist attacks" in the Kenyan capital Nairobi and that attacks "may be in the final stages of planning".

"The Kenyan authorities have alerted the public to a heightened threat from terrorist attacks in Nairobi. We believe that terrorists may be in the final stages of planning attacks," a Foreign Office statement said.

The U.S. navy's rescue of 13 Iranians from pirates who had hijacked their fishing vessel was a "welcome" humanitarian act, foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said on Saturday.

"We consider the actions of the U.S. forces in saving the lives of the Iranian seamen to be a humanitarian and positive act and we welcome such behavior," Mehmanparast told Iran's Arabic-language broadcaster Al-Alam.

Kenyan fighter jets killed at least 60 Islamist Shebab insurgents in southern Somalia in the latest air strike on insurgent positions, officials said Saturday.

"Levels of casualties were very high in air strikes on Friday," Kenyan army spokesman Colonel Cyrus Oguna told reporters, adding the bombing raids hit rebel positions in Garbahare in southern Somalia's Gedo region.

Turkish hackers are threatening to unleash a wave of cyber-attacks against French websites after legislators in Paris voted to approve a law that would ban the denial of the Armenian genocide.

Already, hackers have assailed dozens of French websites, including that of Valerie Boyer, the French politician who introduced the law that could punish genocide deniers with jail time.

The number of dead from a landslide in a remote gold-mining community in the southern Philippines hit 28 Saturday but rescuers said they expected the toll to rise with about 35 people unaccounted for.

Heavy equipment has arrived at the scene but there was continued confusion over exactly how many people might have been buried alive in Pantukan town before dawn on Thursday.

A hot air balloon carrying 11 people turned into a horrifying tower of "sheer flame" Saturday after hitting power lines near a rural New Zealand town, police and witnesses said. All aboard were killed in the deadliest air crash in New Zealand in nearly 50 years.

Two of those killed jumped out of the basket in desperation before the fiery balloon plummeted to farmland with a loud bang as it hit the ground. The balloon crashed near the township of Carterton, in a region well known for its hot air ballooning, in clear, bright early morning conditions with minimal wind.

The United States on Friday urged Latin American countries not to deepen ties with Iran as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prepared to visit Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador.

"As the regime feels increasing pressure, it is desperate for friends and flailing around in interesting places to find new friends," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said when asked about Ahmadinejad's trip.

A purported spokesman for Islamist group Boko Haram on Friday claimed responsibility for separate attacks on a church and Christian mourners in Nigeria that killed around 20 people.

The spokesman who goes by the name Abul Qaqa also said the attacks were in response to an ultimatum he issued on Sunday giving Christians three days to leave the country's mainly Muslim north.

A U.S. Navy ship has rescued 13 Iranians held hostage by Somali pirates for weeks in the Arabian Sea, the American military said on Friday.

The rescue effort came despite days of rising tensions between Iran and the United States, with Tehran issuing threats and warning Washington not to send the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Gunmen fired on Christian mourners in northern Nigeria on Friday, killing 17 people in the latest attack to hit the region amid mounting fears of sectarian clashes, residents and a relief source said.

"There was an attack last night at Good Will Hotel in which five people were killed, all of them Igbos, and today, some friends and relatives of one of those killed in the attack gathered in his house to mourn his death," resident Zubairu Abdulaziz said of the incident in the northeastern town of Mubi, speaking of the Christian Igbo ethnic group.