At least three people were killed and 12 wounded when a passenger train hit a bomb planted on a railway track in southwest Pakistan on Sunday, officials said. 

The bomb exploded when the train reached Mastung, a district in Pakistan's insurgency-hit southwestern Baluchistan province. 

U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Sunday visited the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the Korean peninsula and renewed calls for North Korea to avoid provocations and step away from its nuclear program.

On a brief trip to the heavily mined area that for 60 years has been a buffer between the Koreas, Carter and South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-Koo stood atop a hill known as Observation Post Ouellette -- the closest post to the demarcation line between the two nations. 

A South Korean who was kidnapped by Muslim extremists in the southern Philippines in January has been found dead, police and military officials said Sunday.

The hostage, Hong Nwi-Seong, whose age was given as 70, was discovered in Patikul town on the strife-torn island of Jolo on Saturday, more than nine months after he was seized by members of the Abu Sayyaf group, said Brigadier General Alan Arrojado, commander of a special anti-terror task force.

The FBI has said it found no evidence an explosion on board the Maldives president's boat was caused by a bomb, a report said, raising questions about his deputy's arrest over the incident.

President Abdulla Yameen was unharmed in the blast on his speed boat which authorities described as an assassination attempt. The September 28 explosion left his wife and two others slightly injured. 

A Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt broke up "in the air" strewing fragments across a wide area, an expert said Sunday as investigators probed the disaster that killed 224 people.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi urged patience to determine the cause of Saturday's crash, after the Islamic State jihadist group (IS) claimed it brought down the A-321 in Egypt's restive Sinai Peninsula.

At least 12 people were killed in the Somali capital on Sunday after Shebab gunmen used a vehicle packed with explosives to blast their way inside a hotel, police said.

The al-Qaida-linked Shebab claimed responsibility for the dawn attack at the Sahafi hotel, which is popular with members of parliament, government employees and businessmen.

The leaders of South Korea, China and Japan said Sunday they were willing to work together again for regional trade and security after setting aside historical animosities with their first summit talks in more than three years.

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye and Chinese and Japanese premiers Li Keqiang and Shinzo Abe discussed a wide range of topics, from free trade to the threat of North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, during a 90-minute sit down in Seoul.

The United Nations does not view Spain's separatist-ruled Catalonia region as having the right to self-determination, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said in an interview published Saturday.

"Spain is an independent and sovereign country that includes the Catalan region," Ban told four Spanish newspapers, El Pais, El Mundo, ABC and La Vanguardia.

Some 50 people at a German shelter for asylum seekers engaged in a violent brawl overnight, hurling chairs and beating each other with table legs, leaving six people injured, police said Saturday.

The punch-up, which took place in the northern town of Itzehoe, was the latest illustration of the rising tensions between refugees at the country's overstretched reception centers.

Turkish politicians hold their final campaign rallies Saturday for a vote many fear is unlikely to bring an end to months of instability as the country confronts bloody jihadist attacks and a renewed Kurdish conflict.

Opinion polls are predicting a replay Sunday of the shock June election which stripped the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of its majority after 13 years of single-party rule, leaving the country without a government after coalition talks failed.