At least three people were killed by floods awash with volcanic mud in eastern Indonesia and thousands more displaced, an official said Wednesday.

Mount Gamalama, which forms the entire island of Ternate in the Maluku chain, erupted and spewed a column of ash about 2,000 meters (6,500) feet) into the air early this month, although there were no casualties or injuries then.

A roadside bomb attack killed three NATO troops in eastern Afghanistan, one of the deadliest flashpoints in the 10-year war against Taliban insurgents, the military said Wednesday.

NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) did not release the nationalities of the troops or give further details of the incident, which happened on Tuesday.

Tens of thousands of weeping North Koreans bade farewell Wednesday to longtime leader Kim Jong-Il as his young son and successor walked beside his father's coffin through a snowbound Pyongyang.

Kim Jong-Un was at the forefront of the three-hour procession, in what analysts said was an attempt to bolster the image of the untested new leader of the impoverished but nuclear-armed nation.

A strong earthquake on Tuesday hit Russia's Siberian region of Tyva on the border with Mongolia but caused no casualties or damage, Russian officials said.

A 6.6-magnitude quake shook southwestern Siberia some 94 kilometers east of Tyva's main city of Kyzyl, U.S. seismologists earlier said.

No oil will be permitted to pass through the key oil transit Strait of Hormuz if the West applies sanctions on Iran's oil exports, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi warned on Tuesday.

The threat was reported by the state news agency IRNA as Iran conducted navy war games near the strait, at the entrance of the oil-rich Gulf.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday named the Kremlin official credited with designing Russia's tightly-controlled political system as deputy prime minister in charge of a modernization drive.

The appointment of Vladislav Surkov, until now Kremlin first deputy chief of staff, comes as Russia's rulers scramble to reassert their authority amid a wave of protests against the conduct of parliamentary elections.

Queen Elizabeth II's husband Prince Philip left hospital Tuesday, four days after being rushed in for emergency heart surgery and missing the royal family's Christmas celebrations.

The outspoken 90-year-old prince smiled and waved as he was driven away in a dark Range Rover vehicle from Papworth hospital near Cambridge, eastern England, an Agence France Presse photographer witnessed.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday belittled Russia's protest movement as lacking any clear aims and rejected their demands for a review of the results of disputed parliamentary polls.

"They have no united program, clear ways of reaching their aims -- which are themselves not clear -- or people who could achieve something concrete," Putin said in comments broadcast by state television.

Pakistan's embattled president on Tuesday used the fourth anniversary of his wife Benazir Bhutto's assassination to urge the country to foil "conspiracies against democracy."

Asif Ali Zardari, who has spent December fending off rampant speculation that he may be forced out of office, was expected to address tens of thousands of followers at the Bhutto mausoleum later Tuesday in a rare public speech.

North Korea was Tuesday preparing a massive ceremonial farewell to late leader Kim Jong-Il as it strove to strengthen a new personality cult around his youthful son and successor Jong-Un.

The secretive state has so far given no details of Wednesday's funeral for its "Dear Leader" of the past 17 years and has not invited foreign delegations to the ceremony.