All six crewmen aboard a Sudanese military helicopter were killed when it crash-landed and burned in North Kordofan state on Friday, the army said.

Fire broke out because of a "technical problem" aboard the Russian-made aircraft three minutes after takeoff from a base at El Obeid, the state capital, army spokesman Sawarmi Khaled Saad told Agence France Presse.

North Korea warned the world Friday to expect no policy changes under new leader Kim Jong-Un, and threatened retaliation against South Korea for "rubbing salt" into the wounds of its grieving people.

The tough statement came a day after the communist nation ended 13 days of mourning for late leader Kim Jong-Il, and proclaimed his son Jong-Un as new supreme chief at a massive memorial ceremony.

The rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) on Friday urged Kurds in Turkey to stage an "uprising" after an air force raid killed 35 villagers near the Iraq border.

"We urge the people of Kurdistan... to react after this massacre and seek a settling of accounts through uprisings," Bahoz Erdal from the armed wing of the PKK, labeled a terrorist organization by Ankara, said in a statement.

A roadside bomb killed four civilians in Afghanistan's southern province of Uruzgan Friday, the provincial head of the crime investigation unit said.

"Four civilians were killed and one injured when their vehicle hit a Taliban-planted mine in Trinkot city this morning," said Gulab Khan.

A tanker truck filled with gasoline crashed and burst into flames on Thursday in Venezuela, engulfing several cars and a bus and killing at least 13 people.

The tanker truck tipped over and spilled gasoline, which ignited and burned seven vehicles, Caracas fire chief William Martinez said.

Turkey's foreign minister on Thursday hit back at French lawmakers who passed a bill last week criminalizing denial of the disputed Armenian genocide.

French lawmakers voted last Thursday to jail and fine anyone in France who denies that the 1915 killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire amounted to genocide, prompting Turkey to suspend political and military cooperation with Paris.

A showdown between Iran and the United States over Tehran's threats to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers worsened Thursday with warships from each side giving weight to an increasingly bellicose exchange of words.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards rejected a warning that the U.S. military would "not tolerate" such a closure, saying they would act decisively "to protect our vital interests."

Sudanese air raids killed 17 people in the South Sudan border state of Western Bahr al-Ghazal on Thursday, the second day of stepped-up bombing along the northern frontier, Juba's military spokesman said.

Khartoum dismissed the allegations as "incorrect."

A gunman on Thursday killed a Western aid worker and seriously wounded his Indonesian colleague when he opened fire at a Doctors Without Borders compound in Mogadishu, police and medical sources said.

It was not immediately clear what motivated the attack in Mogadishu, which is the scene of frequent clashes pitting insurgents against pro-government troops and is often considered the world's most violent capital.

Nine people were injured when a huge fire engulfed a Russian nuclear submarine as it was being repaired, Interfax news agency reported Friday, but officials said all weapons had been removed and there was no radiation risk.

Firefighters launched a massive operation to douse the flames after the blaze broke out Thursday on the 11,740-tonne Yekaterinburg while it was docked in the northern Murmansk region near Russia's border with Norway, sending flames and smoke billowing into the sky.