Albania's interior minister on Thursday said he was in Lebanon looking to repatriate more Albanians related to other nationals who had joined Islamic extremist groups in Syria and Iraq.

Bledi Cuci, in Beirut in the last two days, said he met with Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, the head of Lebanon's General Security Directorate whom Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama had described as "instrumental" in a previous successful attempt.

Albania reported its first confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus on Monday, a man who returned from Italy late last month and his father, the health ministry said.

Albanian rescuers scoured rubble into the night on Tuesday in search of survivors trapped in buildings toppled by the strongest earthquake in decades, with at least 20 lives lost and hundreds of people injured.

Police in Albania and three European Union countries have dismantled a trafficking ring that forced young women to work as prostitutes in Italy, police in Tirana said Wednesday.

Police in Albania, Italy, Slovakia and Belgium -- the countries in which the alleged ring operated -- arrested 17 Albanian nationals in the joint operation.

European ministers will gather in Paris for security talks at the weekend following last week's "targeted and premeditated" jihadist attack on a high-speed train that was foiled by passengers, it was announced Wednesday.

Prosecutors have charged 25-year-old Moroccan Ayoub El Khazzani over the attack, which saw him watch a jihadist video on his phone before entering a toilet in the train, remove his shirt, and step out armed with an assault rifle, 270 rounds of ammunition and a Luger pistol strapped to his chest.

Russia on Thursday broadened a food embargo imposed in retaliation for Western sanctions over Ukraine to include Iceland, a significant fish importer, as well as Montenegro, Albania and Liechtenstein.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Ukraine will be added to the embargo from January 1 next year when a landmark EU-Ukraine trade deal enters force, unless Kiev makes a deal with Moscow.

Two Czech tourists were shot dead while travelling by car in northern Albania, Albanian police said Saturday.

The two tourists, identified by police as Michael Svatos, 27, and Anna Kosinova, 36, were found dead in their car on Friday in Prekal, some 150 kilometres (90 miles) north of capital Tirana in Dukagjin region, the police said. 

Italian and Albanian police on Wednesday arrested 10 people they believe were on the verge of traveling to Syria to join the Islamic State group, judicial sources said.

In a separate operation, Italian police also arrested two North Africans suspected of being members of an Al-Qaida cell engaged in attempts to radicalize potential recruits via the Internet and of plotting terrorist attacks in Italy and North Africa.

A U.S. airstrike in northern Iraq has killed an Islamic State operative who was a person of interest in the 2012 Benghazi attack, the Pentagon said Monday.

Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said Ali Awni al-Harzi of Tunisia was killed in Mosul on June 15. 

Albania went to the polls Sunday in local elections seen as a test of the Balkan country's fragile democracy as it pushes to join the European Union.

Since the fall of communism in the early 1990s, Albanian elections have been often marred by violence and accusations of fraud from all sides.