Colombia's defense minister said Wednesday that four FARC guerrillas were killed and two others captured in an operation in the southwestern part of the country.

Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas said the action occurred in a place called El Peaje in the department of Caqueta.

Thirteen people were killed and three injured in an attack on a village in south-east Niger allegedly carried out by Boko Haram extremists, local officials said Wednesday.

"Thirteen people were executed and three others suffered gunshot wounds in an attack by Boko Haram Tuesday evening in Ala village," Malam Ligari, a local official in the Diffa region, which has been repeatedly attacked by the jihadists, told AFP.

Germany will return thousands of rejected asylum applicants to the Balkans in coming months, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Wednesday, as Berlin toughens its stance against economic migrants amid a record influx.

"I expect that in the next weeks, the number of repatriations, voluntary returns and deportations will rise significantly," de Maiziere said. 

The EU said Wednesday a police raid on a press group linked to a bitter rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was "worrying" and urged Ankara to respect media freedoms just ahead of key elections.

"The situation concerning Kozi-Ipek (is) worrying. We continue to follow the situation very closely," said Catherine Ray, spokeswoman for EU foreign affairs head Federica Mogherini.

Digging through the rubble of an earthquake rubble less than three months after being devastated by floods, residents of the northwestern Pakistan district of Chitral cannot afford to wait for government help.

With temperatures already plummeting as winter fast approaches, there is no time to delay.

A sleeper cell acting on orders from the Islamic State (IS) group carried out the massive bombings on a peace rally in Ankara this month to try to disrupt Turkey's election, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The Ankara prosecutor's office said there was "strong evidence" that the cell was also behind other attacks in the country, including one on the border with Syria in July, and was planning more atrocities.

Somalia's president called on Islamist Shebab fighters Wednesday to surrender amid reports factions have shifted allegiance from Al-Qaida to Islamic State.

Both militant franchises are "destroyers", President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said in a statement, saying he had followed "with interest the now-public dispute within Al-Shebab, over whether to swear allegiance to Al-Qaida or the Islamic State."

Nepal's parliament elected lawmaker Bidhya Bhandari as the country's first female president Wednesday, after the adoption of a landmark constitution last month.

The former defense minister defeated her opponent Kul Bahadur Gurung by 327 to 214 votes to become the Himalayan nation's ceremonial head of state.

Tensions mounted at the key southern gateway for thousands of migrants into Germany, with overstretched German and Austrian officials trading barbs as asylum seekers queued for hours in the cold at border posts.

"Yesterday, I was here from five o'clock in the morning to two o'clock the next night. But the police didn't open the border," said Murtaza, 18, an Afghan at one of the crossings, Simbach am Inn.

Both government and rebels in South Sudan carried out war crimes against civilians and should face justice, an African Union human rights inquiry has said.

The AU's Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan lists a string of abuses, including forced cannibalism and dismemberment, in its report, published late Tuesday.