South Sudan Thursday became the newest member of United Nations, as it joined the world's top club amid pledges to help one of the planet's poorest states take its first steps.

"I declare South Sudan a member of the United Nations," said Joseph Deiss, president of the U.N. General Assembly, after a vote by acclamation admitted the country as the U.N.'s 193rd member.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Thursday he would convene an emergency meeting of his top security officials after five French soldiers were killed in a suicide attack in Afghanistan.

Sarkozy told reporters during Bastille Day celebrations in France that the country's Security Council would meet at his Elysee palace later in the day.

A suicide attack on Thursday struck memorial prayers for the assassinated brother of the Afghan president, killing four people including a senior cleric in a mosque, officials said.

Interior ministry spokesman Siddiq Siddiqi said 13 people were also wounded when the bomber blew himself up in the southern city of Kandahar, where cabinet ministers visiting from the capital Kabul had been in attendance.

Belgium will enforce a burqa ban from July 23 with a fine and possible jail time for women who wear it, joining France as the second EU nation to forbid full veils, Belgian media said Thursday.

The new law was published Wednesday in the kingdom's official journal after deputies approved it unanimously in parliament in April.

The number of civilians killed in the Afghan war in the first half of 2011 rose 15 percent, the United Nations said Thursday, putting the year on track to be the deadliest in a decade.

The disturbing rise in deaths came after the United States sent thousands of extra troops into Afghanistan and said levels of violence in the 2011 fighting season would be an indication of the extent to which it had worked.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Wednesday unveiled Turkey's new cabinet after his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a third straight term in power in the June 12 elections.

Apart from Erdogan, the line-up included 25 ministers, both outgoing cabinet members and newcomers.

A Venezuelan court Wednesday sentenced opposition figure Oswaldo Alvarez to two years in prison for disseminating false information during a television show in March 2010, prosecutors said.

In a statement, prosecutors said Alvarez, a former governor of Zulia state, was convicted for saying that "Venezuela had become a drug trafficking hub."

Indian investigators Thursday probed triple bomb blasts that killed 21 people in Mumbai, the nation's commercial capital which is still emerging from the shadows of the deadly 2008 militant attacks.

The strongest of the coordinated explosions hit busy districts in the south of the city, the same area targeted two and half years ago by Pakistan-based militants who caused mayhem in a 60-hour siege that left 166 people dead.

A small plane crashed early Wednesday near the Brazilian city of Recife after reporting an onboard emergency, killing all of its 16 occupants, rescue officials told Agence France Presse.

The Noar Linhas Aereas plane, which was bound for Natal, the capital and main city of Rio Grande do Norte in northeastern Brazil, crashed within 10 minutes of taking off, authorities said.

The Security Council on Wednesday recommended the admission of South Sudan as the newest member of the United Nations, a decision which goes to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday.

The move comes after South Sudan declared independence before tens of thousands of its citizens and numerous foreign leaders Saturday following nearly 50 years of war with Sudan and millions of deaths.