A strong 6.0-magnitude quake struck off Taiwan early on Sunday, U.S. seismologists said, but no tsunami warning was issued.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a depth of 70 kilometers (40 miles) and hit around 5 am (2100 GMT Saturday), some 50 kilometers east of Su-ao in the northeastern Yilan county.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that the U.S. commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan had "promised" air strikes on residential areas would stop after apologizing for recent civilian deaths.

Karzai met General John Allen, commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker days after a strike in Logar province, which Afghan officials say killed 18 civilians.

A suspected Islamist stabbed two policemen Friday at an underground station in a Brussels neighborhood where scuffles broke out a week earlier, local media reported.

The two victims, a man and a woman who were attacked during a routine check, did not sustain life-threatening wounds, the reports said.

Sudanese rebels seized control of an area in war-ravaged eastern Darfur after deadly clashes with government militias, their spokesman said on Saturday, adding that the army continued to bombard the area.

"Justice and Equality Movement forces seized the Um Ajajah region in eastern Darfur on Friday, destroying a mobile contingent of government militias and capturing 20 small vehicles and large trucks loaded with military equipment," JEM spokesman Gibril Adam Bilal said.

The Afghan government on Saturday sacked five officials for "negligence" after 32 prisoners, including members of the Taliban, escaped when gunmen attacked the jail.

While 18 of the prisoners have now been captured, 14 are still on the run including four members of the Taliban and 10 criminals, ministry of interior spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told Agence France Presse.

North Korea said Saturday it has no plans "at present" to conduct a nuclear test despite what it called South Korean attempts to provoke the situation.

Seoul's government was trying to aggravate the situation through "uninterrupted provocations" against the North, a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by Pyongyang's official news agency.

French President Francois Hollande said Saturday that France would begin its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan next month and complete it by the end of the year.

Speaking after the death of four French soldiers in a Taliban attack, he said France would pay a "national homage" to the men. He added that the wounded will be repatriated rapidly.

A Turkish prosecutor has linked a shadowy group the government suspects of being coup plotters to the 2007 murders of three Christian missionaries, media reports said Saturday.

The three members of a Bible publishing firm, including a German national, were tortured and killed in April 2007 in the eastern town of Malatya. Nine people are already on trial for the murder, of whom six are in jail.

Pakistan on Saturday branded U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's remarks on insurgent safe havens in the country as "misplaced and unhelpful".

Panetta warned Pakistan on Thursday that the U.S. was running out of patience over Islamabad's refusal to do more to eliminate hiding places for insurgents, who attack U.S. troops fighting a 10-year war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Gunmen in Nigeria's troubled north killed two policemen and a customs officer, while two civilians wounded in the separate attacks died later, witnesses said Saturday.

In the region's largest city Kano, two gunmen on Saturday shot dead an official of the secret police, Aminu Isa, and fled, a resident told Agence France Presse.