A stampede at a railway station in the northern Indian city of Allahabad in which at least 36 people died may have been caused by overcrowding, India’s railway minister has said.

Russian police detained nearly 300 Muslims from several countries in Saint Petersburg in an investigation into involvement in “terrorist activities”, authorities in St Petersburg said on Saturday.

Five car bombs killed at least 34 people in Shi’ite areas of Iraq on Friday, police and medics said, as sectarian and ethnic tensions intensify ahead of provincial elections in April.

Afzal Guru, sentenced to death over his role in a deadly attack on India’s parliament in 2001, has been hanged in Delhi’s Tihar jail after his mercy petition was rejected by Pranab Mukherjee, the Indian president, according to Indian officials.

At least one protester was killed and 50 others were injured in clashes Friday between Egyptian protesters and security forces near the presidential palace, Egyptian media reported.

Mortar attacks on an exile camp housing Iranian dissidents near Baghdad killed a number of people early on Saturday, an Iraqi security official and a United Nations spokeswoman said.

first Iranian presidential visit to Egypt for more than thirty years has been beset by controversy with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being lectured by the Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh and then attacked outside a mosque by a man wielding a shoe.

Egypt’s top cleric Ahmed al-Tayyeb told visiting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday to not interfere in the affairs of Bahrain or the Gulf and to uphold the rights of his country’s Sunni minority.

MK Moshe Feiglin, from the Likud Beiteinu party, stormed Al Aqsa Mosque on Tuesday at 1:30 pm, guarded by the occupation forces, Al-Aqsa Foundation for Waqf and Heritage reported.

Key talks on the Afghan peace process involving the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan are due to start at the country retreat of UK PM David Cameron.