Dozens of attackers suspected to belong to a gang of robbers raided a northern Nigerian village armed with guns and machetes, killing at least 18 and burning homes, a police source said Sunday.

A group of around 150 assailants attacked Ligydo, a remote farming and herding village in Zamfara state, on Saturday, killing 18 people and seriously wounding six others, a senior police officer told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

German authorities said Sunday they had arrested four alleged Islamists on suspicion of illegally obtaining weapons ahead of a ceremony in Bonn to mark Germany's reunification.

The four men, aged between 22 and 27, were seized Saturday night and their apartments searched, said police in Cologne, near to Bonn, where the festivities were due to be attended by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Back-to-back typhoons left at least 55 people dead and rescuers scrambling on Sunday to deliver food and water to hundreds of villagers stuck on rooftops for four days because of flooding in the northern Philippines.

Typhoon Nalgae slammed ashore in northeastern Isabela province Saturday then barreled across the main Luzon Island's mountainous north and agricultural plains that were still sodden from fierce rain and wind unleashed by a howler just days earlier. Nalgae left at least three people dead Saturday while Typhoon Nesat killed 52 others in the same region before blowing out Friday.

Lawyer Masoud Shafii who represented the now free U.S. hikers held for two years in Iran on espionage and illegal entry charges was barred from leaving the country on Sunday, a source close to the case told Agence France Presse

"This morning at around six o'clock (0230 GMT), after getting his passport stamped and as he was boarding the plane, his passport was confiscated by order of the judiciary," the source said on condition of anonymity.

Hamid Karzai is reviewing his strategy for making peace with the Taliban and will address the nation on next steps "very soon," a spokesman for the Afghan president said Sunday.

The move came after the assassination of his top peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani by a turban bomber last month which Afghan officials say was planned by the Afghan Taliban's leadership body, the Quetta Shura, in Pakistan.

A roadside bomb has ripped through an Afghan army vehicle in southeast Afghanistan, killing nine soldiers and wounding four others, an official said Sunday.

The blast hit a vehicle out on patrol in Paktiya province Saturday, said provincial spokesman Rohullah Samoon, blaming the attack on the Taliban.

The United States and North Korea are likely to hold a second round of talks this month to try to revive international nuclear disarmament negotiations, a South Korean report said Sunday.

The meeting may come after a summit between U.S. President Barack Obama and his South Korean counterpart Lee Myung-Bak in Washington on October 13, an unnamed senior government official in Seoul told Yonhap news agency.

Gunmen who snatched a disabled 66-year-old Frenchwoman from her beachfront home in a prized Kenyan resort have taken her to neighboring war-torn Somalia, officials said Sunday.

With Kenyan forces obliged to stop their pursuit at the border and officials suspecting Somalia's al-Qaida-inspired Shebab, chances dimmed of a quick release for the woman, named as Marie Dedieu.

More than 700 anti-Wall Street protestors were arrested in New York on Saturday when they blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, forcing authorities to shut it down for hours, police said.

Anti-Wall Street activists first occupied a small park in lower Manhattan two weeks ago to protest corporate bailouts and corporate influence in politics, but took their demonstration to the bridge on Saturday.

The United States warned its nationals Saturday of "potential for retaliation" after two key Al-Qaeda figures were killed in an air raid in Yemen.

The State department issued a global travel alert to U.S. citizens, a day after Washington confirmed that U.S.-Yemeni citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi, the external operations leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), was killed.