A drug cartel installed 39 surveillance cameras in a Mexican city bordering the United States to monitor the movements of residents and security forces, authorities said Friday.

It underlines the pervasiveness of Mexico's powerful drug cartels, who have eyes and ears in towns and cities across the country thanks to human "halcones," or hawks, who act as lookouts and relay information to the gangs.

Militants killed an Egyptian soldier Friday after abducting him from an ambulance in an ambush in the Sinai Peninsula, security officials said, in an attack claimed by the affiliate of the Islamic State group.

The jihadist Sinai Province -- formerly known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis -- and which has pledged allegiance to the IS organisation, is spearheading an Islamist insurgency against security forces on the peninsula since the army ousted president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Algeria's defense ministry said on Friday a military sweep in an area where 25 Islamist gunmen were killed this week has uncovered two major arms caches.

Since Tuesday, the army has been searching the mountainous Ferkioua area of Bouira province, east of Algiers.

A top pro-Russian rebel said on Friday that a new round of Ukraine crisis talks had resulted in no breakthrough but would continue in the coming weeks.

The chief negotiator of the self-declared Lugansk People's Republic said the European-mediated talks got stuck on the crucial issue of when and under what terms Ukraine's two renegade eastern provinces could conduct their own elections.

Regional Shiite power Iran on Friday denounced a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Saudi Arabia that killed and wounded several people.

Official IRNA news agency quoted foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham as "vigorously condemning" the attack, which has been claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.

At least 37 armed civilians and two federal police officers were killed in a clash Friday in western Mexico, a region torn by drug cartel violence, a federal government official told AFP.

The shootout took place in the morning in the municipality of Tanhuato, in the state of Michoacan, and the death toll was a "preliminary figure," the official said on condition of anonymity.

Turkish authorities have detained and then deported a French national who arrived in the country seeking to join jihadists in Syria, an official said Friday.

The man, identified only as B.T., had landed Thursday night at Sabiha Gokcen airport in Istanbul on a flight from Milan, the Turkish official, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

Colombia's FARC guerrillas suspended their unilateral ceasefire Friday after a government air strike killed 26 rebels, plunging peace talks to end the five-decade conflict into a new crisis.

The December ceasefire announcement by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had raised hopes that the two-year-old peace negotiations were approaching a breakthrough. But tensions have spiraled since the rebels killed 11 soldiers in an ambush last month.

An explosive device has struck a Mexican federal police building and another blew up in front of the National Electoral Institute in a northern city torn by drug cartel violence.

Thursday's explosions in Matamoros, which lies at the border with Texas, did not cause injuries or major damage, said Herminio Garza, secretary general of the Tamaulipas state government.

The State Department on Friday released a first batch of emails by Hillary Clinton, giving an unprecedented glimpse into the work of the former top diplomat in the wake of a deadly 2012 attack on a U.S. mission in Libya. 

The emails have stoked fresh controversy since Clinton -- who is now running for president -- admitted to using a private server and email address during her tenure as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.