Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday called for an "end to the bloodshed" in conflict-wracked Syria in his traditional Christmas message that touched on several other of the world's conflict zones and attacks on Christians.

"There is hope in the world... even at the most difficult times and in the most difficult situations," he said, praying for peace in Syria, whose people have been "deeply wounded and divided by a conflict which does not spare even the defenseless and reaps innocent victims."

coast, the International Maritime Bureau said Monday.

"Pirates armed with guns attacked, boarded an offshore supply vessel ... and kidnapped four crew members," the IMB's Piracy Reporting Center said of the Sunday attack.

Two suspected suicide car bombers attacked the offices of two major telecoms companies in the volatile northern Nigerian city of Kano on Saturday, police and the army said.

One of the attackers blew himself up when he rammed his car into the office gate of the Airtel mobile phone company, setting the building ablaze, police said.

Four South Korean workers who were kidnapped earlier this week in southern Nigeria have been released unharmed, a foreign ministry spokesman said Saturday.

The four workers from South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries, were abducted by armed men Monday while working at a construction site in the state of Bayelsa.

Gunmen who abducted a Frenchman in northern Nigeria probably have links to al Qaida's north African group or to Islamist groups in northern Mali, French President Francois Hollande said Friday.

"He was captured by a heavily armed group which killed two Nigerians and is probably linked to AQIM (Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb) or the groups which are today in Mali," he told a French radio station.

A group of 30 gunmen stormed a residence in northern Nigeria where expatriate workers were staying, kidnapping a French engineer and killing a security guard and a neighbor, police said Thursday.

The gate outside the building that housed employees of the French company Vergnet had several bullet holes after the raid late Wednesday in the northern state of Katsina, according to residents and police.

Well armed pirates who stormed and ransacked an oil tanker off Nigeria have kidnapped five Indian crew members, said a statement Wednesday from the operators of the ship.

Medallion Marine, which operates the SP Brussels tanker, said their vessel was boarded on Monday by "heavily armed pirates" about 40 miles (65 kilometers) off the coast of the oil-producing Niger Delta region.

A helicopter crash in southern Nigeria on Saturday killed a state governor, a former national security adviser and at least four others, rescue officials and the ruling party said.

The National Emergency Management Agency said that "the bodies of the six passengers on-board the helicopter" had been taken to the "mortuary", while a statement from the ruling party confirmed that Kaduna state Governor Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa and ex-national security adviser Owoye Azazi were among the victims.

The elderly mother of Nigeria's finance minister was on Friday freed from kidnappers after being abducted from her home in the country's south last weekend in a crime that shocked the country, police said.

Details of the release were unclear and there was no indication of whether a ransom was paid to free the 82-year-old Kamene Okonjo, whose daughter Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is a high-profile minister and ex-World Bank managing director.

A policeman and at least three suspected Boko Haram gunmen died Monday following an early morning bombing and shooting raid on a police formation in northeast Nigeria, a military spokesman said.

Suspected Boko Haram Islamists launched an attack with explosives and rifles on a regional police headquarters in the town of Potiskum in Yobe state around 2:00 am (0100 GMT), leading to a shootout with police and troops, Lieutenant Lazarus Eli said.