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.

At least six children and one man were killed when a bomb planted in a garbage bin exploded Friday in Tirin Kot, capital of Afghanistan's southern province of Uruzgan, police said.

Four other children who were playing nearby were wounded, said spokesman Fardi Ayel.

Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents have demanded in negotiations with the U.S. that prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay be transferred to Qatar, an Afghan government spokesman said Friday.

But President Hamid Karzai's government objects strongly to the move and wants the prisoners sent directly to Afghanistan, presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi told Agence France Presse.

Iran is to hold fresh military exercises in and around the strategic Strait of Hormuz within weeks, the naval commander of its powerful Revolutionary Guards was quoted as saying on Friday.

The maneuvers are to be held in the Iranian calendar month that runs from January 21 to February 19, the Fars news agency quoted Ali Fadavi as saying.

A Pakistani man convicted on terrorism charges has been sentenced to more than four years in jail in the United States over a plot to smuggle a member of the Pakistani Taliban into the country.

Irfan Ul Haq, 37 -- who last September pleaded guilty along with two other Pakistanis to conspiracy to provide support to a terror organization -- was sentenced to 50 months in jail by a U.S. federal judge in Washington on Thursday.