A Taliban bomb attack killed 10 Afghan police returning from a recruitment center in southern Afghanistan's restive Helmand province on Thursday, the local government said.

The victims were members of the U.S.-funded Afghan Local Police (ALP) set up last year and touted as key to a handover of security control, which will see all foreign combat troops leave Afghanistan in theory by the end of 2014.

A fire followed by several explosions engulfed many state warehouses and neighboring homes, killing at least 17 people and injuring 108 in Myanmar's main city of Yangon on Thursday.

The blasts occurred as firefighters were putting out the fire that had started in a state-owned warehouse before spreading to other warehouses and nearby homes and buildings before dawn.

North Korea staged a massive memorial service for Kim Jong-Il on Thursday to end 13 days of official mourning, and formally declared his untested young son Jong-Un as the new supreme leader.

Addressing tens of thousands of troops and civilians packing a wintry Pyongyang square, ceremonial head of state Kim Yong-Nam praised the late leader for contributing to "global peace and stability of the 21st century.”

A U.S. aircraft carrier entered a zone near the Strait of Hormuz being used by the Iranian navy for wargames, an Iranian official said Thursday amid rising tensions over the key oil-transit channel.

"A U.S. aircraft carrier was spotted inside the maneuver zone... by a navy reconnaissance aircraft," Commodore Mahmoud Mousavi, the spokesman for the Iranian exercises, told the official IRNA news agency.

A Turkish air raid on a Kurdish area near the Iraq border killed at least 35 people, with the military apparently mistaking smugglers for separatist rebels, officials said Thursday.

The Turkish authorities said its warplanes targeted militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) on the Iraqi side of the border.

China said Thursday police killed seven "terrorists" who took hostages in the nation's restive Xinjiang region during a rescue operation that left one police officer dead.

The incident is the latest reported violent confrontation in the region -- home to roughly nine million Turkic-speaking Uighurs who have long bristled under Chinese rule -- since three deadly attacks in July left dozens dead.

The U.S. warned Iran on Wednesday against any attempt to disrupt shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, after Tehran issued threats over the vital oil route, as France called on Iranian authorities to respect international law and navigation rights.

"Interference with the transit ... of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz will not be tolerated," said Pentagon press secretary George Little.

The European Union is pressing ahead with plans to impose new sanctions on Iran, an EU spokesman said Wednesday after Tehran threatened to close a vital oil transit channel in response to Western measures.

"The European Union is considering another set of sanctions against Iran and we continue to do that," Michael Mann, spokesman for EU foreign affairs Chief Catherine Ashton, told Agence France Presse.

A packed Russian-made Tu-134 passenger jet flipped over and caught fire on landing in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh on Wednesday, injuring at least six people, officials and witnesses said.

There were no immediate reports of fatalities, with officials reporting bad weather conditions at the time of the accident on the Kyrgyzstan Airlines flight, which was carrying 79 people, including nine children.

A bomb was thrown into an Arabic school in mainly Christian southern Nigeria, wounding at least seven, police said Wednesday, after Christmas attacks sparked fears of sectarian violence in the country.

"A locally made low-capacity explosive was thrown into an Arabic school in Sapele at 10:00 pm yesterday," said state police spokesman Charles Mouka.