Germany said Tuesday that one of its nationals had died in a tense region of Tunisia, after Tunisian officials said police had killed two women at the weekend, mistaking them for members of an armed group.

"The foreign ministry must unfortunately confirm that a German national was fatally injured in Kasserine in Tunisia," a ministry spokeswoman told AFP.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday backed Madrid's opposition to attempts by Spain's economically powerful Catalonia region to hold an independence referendum in November.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has pledged to go to the Constitutional Court to block any Catalan attempt to hold the poll, arguing that sovereignty is a matter for all of Spain to decide.

Germany's secret service has been spying on Albania for years to keep tabs on "organized crime", Der Spiegel claimed on Saturday, days after it was revealed that Berlin had been eavesdropping on Turkey.

In a report to be published Sunday, the German weekly says that even before Albania joined NATO in 2009, it was on the BND intelligence service's list of "key states" to monitor.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed for a new ceasefire in crisis talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Saturday, as a controversial Russian convoy returned home.

The visit by Merkel -- the most influential Western leader to call on Kiev since the crisis erupted in the ex-Soviet state -- came ahead of crunch talks next Tuesday between Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin alongside top EU officials.

Germany said Friday it regretted any offense caused to Qatar after a cabinet minister linked the Arab state to financing of jihadist militants in Syria and Iraq.

"We regret if there have been any misunderstandings" a foreign ministry spokesman said after the comments by Development Aid Minister Gerd Mueller to a German public broadcaster.

Almost two thirds of Germans fear Russia plans further land grabs in Ukraine, according to an opinion poll released on the eve of Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to the conflict-torn country.

And 60 percent of respondents said they worried that the crisis will lead to a direct military confrontation between Russia and its former Soviet satellite, according to the Politbarometer survey by public broadcaster ZDF.

Britain, France and Germany have launched a fresh bid at the U.N. to end six weeks of violence in Gaza, after Israeli warplanes killed three top Hamas commanders, inflicting a heavy blow on the movement's armed wing.

The European initiative on Thursday came as fighting flared on the ground and an Egyptian-led effort to broker peace talks teetered on the verge of collapse.

U.S. President Barack Obama called for a joint effort to eliminate the "cancer" of jihadist terror in Iraq and Syria on Wednesday, after Islamic State militants murdered an American journalist.

Obama said the entire world was appalled by the beheading of 40-year-old reporter James Foley, which the IS fighters videotaped and published on the Internet.

Germany is ready to send weapons to support Iraqi Kurds in their battle against the "barbaric" jihadist militants of the Islamic State, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Wednesday.

After other European countries said they would send arms to help the embattled Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, "we are ready to do the same," Steinmeier said at a joint press conference with Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen.

Germany's development aid minister, Gerd Mueller, on Wednesday accused Qatar of financing the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) operating in Syria and Iraq.

"A story like this always has a history," he said in an interview with public broadcaster ZDF. "Who is financing these troops? Hint: Qatar."