Two rockets struck close to a transition ceremony being held in the eastern Afghan province of Laghman on Tuesday, where foreign troops were handing control over to local forces.

An AFP reporter at the ceremony said the rockets struck towards the end of proceedings and landed some two kilometers away from where it was being held the town of Mehtar Lam and attended by senior officials.

Iran on Tuesday declared that the "innocence" would be proved of its nationals accused of the 1994 bombing that leveled a Jewish charity building in Argentina and killed 85 people.

"If in fair conditions and within legal procedures a serious effort is made to shed light on this action, the error in this case and the attempt by some to implicate some citizens of our country will become known and the innocence of our nationals will be proven," Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters.

Guinea's newly-installed president survived a rocket attack on his residence that left one dead Tuesday, bringing into sharp focus the challenges he faces to stabilize the country.

Alpha Conde addressed the nation on state television hours later in a bid to appease fears that the coup-prone west African country was slipping back into violence barely half a year after he came to power.

Gunmen have kidnapped eight local staff working for a U.S. charity near the Afghan border in southwest Pakistan, which is rife with insurgency and sectarian violence, officials said Tuesday.

Government officials said the American Refugee Committee (ARC) workers were kidnapped on Monday in Pishin district, about 50 kilometers north of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.

A Pakistani surveillance navy drone crashed near an oil refinery after hitting a bird on a routine flight, coming down in the country's largest city of Karachi on Tuesday, the navy said.

"A Pakistan Navy UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) crashed after a bird hit it. It fell near an oil refinery and there was no (other) damage," Commodore Irfan Ul Haq, spokesman Pakistan Navy told Agence France Presse in Islamabad.

Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has insisted that he will guide the choice of his successor, saying China's plans to control the selection of the Buddhist leader were "ridiculous."

The Dalai Lama on Monday headed back to his home in exile in India after a nearly two-week visit to the United States. President Barack Obama welcomed him Saturday at the White House, leading China to lodge a protest.

At least four people were killed when a crowd attacked a police station Monday in the latest bout of deadly unrest in China's restive Xinjiang region, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The dead included two security officers and two people who had been taken hostage in the incident in the remote city of Hotan, it said.

The U.N.'s highest court Monday ordered Thailand and Cambodia to immediately withdraw their troops from a disputed area around an ancient temple on the border between the two Asian neighbors.

"Both parties should immediately withdraw their military personnel currently present in the provisional demilitarized zone and refrain from any military presence within that zone," said the order, read by International Court of Justice president Judge Hisashi Owada at a sitting in The Hague.

Four Russian policemen were killed and nine others wounded Monday in two separate blasts in Russia's restive North Caucasus, news agencies quoted local law enforcement officials as saying.

Two policemen were killed and seven injured in the wooded mountains of restive Chechnya, Interfax quoted a law enforcement official as saying.

General David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan and most celebrated military leader of his generation, stepped down on Monday after a checkered year at the helm of what is America's longest war.

At a ceremony in Kabul Petraeus passed the baton to John Allen, a former subordinate who made his name in Iraq by striking tribal alliances considered integral in reversing al-Qaida's momentum after years of appalling violence.