The Sudanese army has attacked a heavily armed convoy of Darfur rebels near the war-torn region's border with Libya, killing one and seizing a truck load of weapons, the army spokesman said on Tuesday.

"Yesterday (Monday), when the Sudanese armed forces tried to close the border, where Sudan, Libya and Chad meet, clashes erupted with a small group from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)," Sawarmi Khaled Saad told Agence France Presse.

The Paris prosecutor on Tuesday asked for French former president Jacques Chirac and nine other accused to be acquitted in a graft trial relating to his time as Paris mayor.

"I seek acquittal for all the accused on all charges," prosecutor Michel Maes told the court.

A Taliban suicide bomber with explosives hidden in his turban Tuesday assassinated Afghanistan's former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was leading efforts to talk peace with insurgents.

The attacker had been invited into Rabbani's Kabul home with an accomplice because they were thought to be emissaries bringing "special messages" from the Taliban.

Two U.S. hikers convicted of spying in Iran are still in a prison in Tehran as a judge who is to authorize their release has yet to return from leave, their lawyer said on Tuesday.

"I went to the court today and they told me that the... judge is not here. I waited a while and after some time I left. They told me that they will call me" when the judge returns, the lawyer, Masoud Shafii, told Agence France Presse.

A powerful bomb rocked the center of Turkish capital Ankara on Tuesday, killing three people and injuring at least 15, the interior minister said, as immediate suspicion fell on Kurdish separatists.

"Three citizens were killed and 15 were injured, five of whom are in critical condition," Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin told Turkish television.

Israel's consulate in the southern French port city of Marseille was temporarily evacuated Tuesday when a bomb disposal squad found a mock device placed in a van parked outside.

Police were alerted after an anonymous caller telephoned in a bomb threat, and found a pressure cooker with protruding wires and marked with a radiation warning sticker in a Renault van parked outside the Israeli mission.

A helicopter that went down during a training exercise at Southern California's Camp Pendleton killed the two Marines onboard and set off a fast-moving brush fire on the base Monday.

The blaze burned 48.6 hectares and was 80 percent contained Monday evening, a base statement said.

More than a million people in Japan were warned to leave their homes on Tuesday as an approaching typhoon brought heavy rain and fears of landslides and flash flooding.

Typhoon Roke, packing winds of up to 144 kilometers an hour near its center, could land in central Japan Wednesday and move northeast, possibly towards the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, the Japanese weather agency said.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his U.S. counterpart Leon Panetta met Monday at the Pentagon to discuss political changes in the region ahead of the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations.

At the second Pentagon meeting for the two defense leaders since Panetta became Defense Secretary in July "Panetta and Barak each stressed the importance of the close security ties that bind the two nations, including America's continued commitment to ensuring Israel's qualitative military edge," Douglas Wilson, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton here on Monday urged Turkey to defuse tension and repair strategic ties with Israel as Washington values them both as allies, U.S. officials said.

Washington has expressed mounting concern about the bitter row between Turkey and Israel over a May 2010 Israeli commando raid on an aid flotilla heading to the Gaza Strip that left nine Turks dead.