Two Russian soldiers died in a shootout with militants in the Caucasus region of Dagestan where violence shows no sign of easing, police said Friday.

The shootout, which also left four servicemen and three policemen wounded, took place just outside the village of Tsetkovka in the Caspian Sea region on Thursday, regional police said.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for a "new era" in Franco-Turkish relations in a congratulatory phone call to president-elect Francois Hollande, officials said Friday.

In the call late on Thursday, Erdogan said he hoped "Turko-French relations will from now on be free from artificial questions currently affecting them," an official in Erdogan's entourage said.

The double agent who infiltrated al-Qaida and helped foil a plot to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner held a British passport in addition to being a Saudi national, CNN reported Thursday.

The man was sent by Saudi counterterrorism agents into Yemen as a mole after it was learned that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula was developing an updated model of the underwear bomb that failed to explode in a Christmas Day 2009 attempt.

The White House insisted Thursday it was not disappointed that Russian President Vladimir Putin will skip the G8 summit and talks with President Barack Obama next week.

The Russian leader, returned as president after a four year break Monday, and was expected to have a first chance to meet on a president-to-president level with Obama at the Camp David summit in Maryland.

Four people were killed and five wounded Thursday when a group of six suicide bombers wearing police uniforms attempted to storm a government building in southeastern Afghanistan, police said.

A firefight erupted as the attackers tried to get through a police checkpoint in an attempt to attack the Yahyakhail district governor's office in Paktika province, provincial police chief Dawlat Khan Zadran told Agence France Presse.

North Korea said Thursday it would strengthen its nuclear deterrent and other defenses regardless of cost, amid fears it is preparing for another atomic weapons test.

"No matter what high expense the army and people of the DPRK (North Korea) have to cover, they will further bolster its defense capability including nuclear deterrence to firmly protect its dignity and sovereignty," said a state body known as the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea.

Russian investigators on Thursday questioned two top protest leaders over their roles in clashes with police on the eve of Vladimir Putin's inauguration that could leave them jailed for 10 years.

The Investigative Committee said anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny and leftist radical Sergei Udaltsov -- both sentenced on Wednesday to 15 days' detention for a different protest -- would soon be questioned.

Italian police are searching for two men linked to the far-left Red Brigades militant group who are suspected of carrying out an attack on the head of a nuclear energy company, media reports said Thursday.

The suspects, who tried to reform a former Red Brigades cell in 2000, are thought to be behind Monday's attack in Genoa, when a gunman shot the head of Ansaldo Nucleare in the ankle, before escaping with an accomplice.

The Red Cross said Thursday it was reviewing its presence in Pakistan following the murder of a British aid worker found beheaded last month.

Health program manager Khalil Rasjed Dale, 60, was abducted in January and his mutilated body was found dumped in a bag on the outskirts of Quetta in the southwestern province of Baluchistan.

Neither the United Nations nor the African Union can impose its will on Sudan, President Omar al-Bashir said on Thursday, after fresh fighting along the border with South Sudan.

"We will implement what we want and, what we do not want, no one can impose upon us -- neither the U.N. Security Council nor the African Union Peace and Security Council," Bashir said.