Five people were killed in a New Year's Eve hand grenade attack and shooting in a bar in the eastern Kenyan town of Garissa near the border with Somalia, police said Sunday.

"There was an explosion in a club in town shortly before midnight (Saturday) and five people died," a senior police officer at Northeast provincial headquarters told AFP.

New Year's festivities in Italy turned deadly when firecrackers blew up a home killing a 31-year-old man, and a ricocheting bullet from celebratory gunfire took another life, Italian media reported Sunday.

Despite a ban on firecrackers in Italy's main cities and thousands of towns across the country, 561 people were injured according to police figures, including 76 children, many suffering burns to the hands or eyes.

At least 50 people were killed in clashes between two neighboring communities in Nigeria's southeastern Ebonyi state, a government spokesman said Sunday.

"Upwards of 50 people were killed when a group of people from Ezza community attacked residents of neighboring Ezilo community over a land dispute," the Onyekachi Eni told AFP by telephone.

Iran successfully test fired a medium-range surface-to-air missile on Sunday during navy war games taking place near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a spokesman for the maneuvers said, according to the official IRNA news agency.

"This medium-range surface-to-air missile is equipped with the latest technology to combat radar-evading targets and intelligent systems which try to disrupt missile navigation," Commodore Mahmoud Mousavi was quoted as saying.

A group of anti-North Korea activists in Seoul on Sunday launched leaflets that criticized the North's new leader and urged its people to rise up against the communist regime, a group leader said.

About 70 activists floated large gas-filled balloons carrying some 50,000 leaflets and instant noodles after an anti-Pyngyang rally at Imjingak, a tourist site near the border north of Seoul, said Choi Woo-Won.

A major 7.0-magnitude earthquake rocked Tokyo Sunday as Emperor Akihito led Japan's New Year celebrations by urging people to work together in rebuilding the nation from March's quake-tsunami disaster.

The tremor struck at 2:28pm (0528 GMT) with its focus deep at about 370 kilometers (230 miles), Japan's Meteorological Agency said. The U.S. Geological Survey put the depth at 348 kilometers.

Top negotiator Saeed Jalili said Iran was ready to rejoin EU-led talks with major powers on assuaging Western concerns over its nuclear program even as tensions with the United States soared in the Gulf.

"We will give a resounding and many-pronged response to any threat against the Islamic Republic of Iran," Jalili told Iranian diplomats gathered in Tehran in comments reported on Saturday.

French defense Minister Gerard Longuet held talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai Saturday on a two-day visit to Afghanistan to meet troops over the New Year.

Longuet touched down in Kabul two days after the death of two French Foreign Legion soldiers who were shot dead by a man wearing an Afghan army uniform in eastern Kapisa province.

Russian riot police arrested dozens of people on Saturday in Moscow and Saint Petersburg who tried to stage unsanctioned New Year's Eve protests against 12 years of Vladimir Putin's dominant rule.

The show of police force marked the first time the authorities had cracked down on members of the Russian opposition since allowing two massive rallies on December 10 and December 24.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan on Saturday declared a state of emergency in areas hard hit by violence blamed on Islamist sect Boko Haram and ordered the closure of part of the country's borders.

He announced the measures after branding Boko Haram a "cancerous" body that was bent on destroying Africa's most populous country and vowing that the group blamed for a wave of bloody attacks would be crushed.