Britain closed its Tehran embassy on Wednesday after evacuating all its diplomats from Iran as part of a "very tough" response to the storming of the mission the day before by Iranian protesters.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britain had also ordered Iran to vacate its embassy in London by Friday, stressing it did not mean diplomatic ties between the two countries had been entirely cut off.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Myanmar Wednesday on the first top-level U.S. visit for half a century, seeking to encourage a "movement for change" in the military-dominated nation.

Clinton flew into a little-used airport in Naypyidaw, the remote city where Myanmar's generals abruptly moved their capital in 2005, in a stark test of U.S. efforts to engage the strategic but long-isolated country.

A Libyan gunman wounded two people Wednesday in one of Istanbul's top tourist attractions Wednesday before being killed by police after an hour-long shootout, authorities and local media said.

The man entered the Topkapi Palace on the banks of the Bosphorus Strait and began shooting in all directions with a pump action shotgun, NTV television quoted Istanbul police Chief Huseyin Capkin as saying.

A suicide bomber blew himself up at a military base in Mogadishu Wednesday, killing four people but failing to enter the compound, officials and witnesses said.

"The suicide bomber tried to enter the compound but guards stopped him, when he then detonated his bomb, killing three people on the spot including himself," said Farah Barre, a government security official.

The arrest of ex-Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo was "just the beginning" of the probe in the west African country, the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor said Wednesday.

"This is the first case in the Cote d'Ivoire. It would not be the last case. This is just the beginning," Luis Moreno-Ocampo told Agence France Presse in an interview by phone.

Norway has closed its embassy in Tehran after the British mission in the Iranian capital was attacked by an angry mob, the government said on Wednesday.

Norway's diplomatic staff is still in Tehran and no decision has been taken to evacuate them, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hilde Steinfeld told Agence France Presse.

A 5.0 magnitude tremor shook the eastern Turkish province of Van overnight without causing damage or casualties in an area already ravaged by two deadly earthquakes, media said on Tuesday.

The tremor at about 00:27 GMT panicked the region's residents, many of them still living in tent camps since an October 23 earthquake killed more than 600 people, the Anatolia news agency reported.

North Korea said Wednesday that it is making rapid progress on work to enrich uranium and build a light-water nuclear power plant, increasing worries that the country is developing another way to make atomic weapons.

An unidentified spokesman at Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the construction of an experimental light-water reactor and low enriched uranium are "progressing apace."

Britain was Wednesday evacuating its diplomatic staff from Iran following the storming of its embassy by Iranian protesters the day before, which sparked international condemnation.

The Foreign Office in London confirmed information from EU diplomats in the Iranian capital that the British staff was being withdrawn.

A U.N. expert tasked with investigating alleged human rights abuses in Iran will talk to Iranian activists in France, Germany and Belgium this week after a request to visit the country itself was refused.

United Nations Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed will meet Iranians living in the three countries during a fact-finding mission from November 30 to December 8.