Dhaka  - Three Chinese crew of a Panama flag-carrier vessel were killed in Bangladesh's main Chittagong port when they fell into an oil tank of the vessel, port official said Saturday.

The officials said that the Chinese national sailors identified as Tan Weifang, 37, the chief officer, Ju Liang Shang, 41, the third officer, and sailor Xu Jiang, 26 died of toxic gas of the tank.

The crew of the edible oil-laden vessel MT Zhong Ye-6, which reached the Chittagong Port at about on Saturday, fell into the oil tank of the vessel while working on the tank.

Antananarivo - Madagascan troops have opened fire on an anti-government demonstration in the capital, killing 40 protestors and injuring 300 more, according to local media reports on Saturday.

Among the dead are thought to be two TV journalists, including a foreign correspondent.

There was no immediate official confirmation of the death toll.

Soldiers fired on the demonstration on the tropical island off south-eastern Africa on Saturday afternoon, as protestors apparently tried to storm the presidential palace.

Hamburg  - An arch-conservative bishop whose remarks on the Holocaust plunged the Vatican into crisis is refusing to recant, according to an interview with a German magazine released Saturday.

Bishop Richard Williamson told the news weekly Der Spiegel he wanted first to examine the historical evidence against his claims that no Jews were gassed in the Holocaust.

"And if I find such evidence then I will correct my remarks. But that will take time," the controversial member of the traditionalist St Pius X Society said.

Islamabad  - Taliban militants in troubled north-western Pakistan said Saturday that a Polish electrician held by them for the last 18 weeks has been beheaded.

A Taliban spokesman who identified himself as Mohammad, told various media organizations over the phone that Polish citizen Peter Stanczak was executed in tribal district of South Waziristan after the expiry of a February 6 deadline given to Pakistani and Polish governments to fulfil the militants' demands.

Cairo - Egyptian security forces on Friday arrested 60 members of the Muslim Brotherhood group as the banned opposition movement prepared to protest across the country, according to a security source.

The source said the arrests took place in five of Egypt's governorates ahead of the planned public action in solidarity in the eastern district of Nasr City, in solidarity with the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

Berlin - Four European tourists kidnapped last month in Mali are in the hands of the North African branch of al-Qaeda, the mass-circulation German newspaper Bild said Friday, quoting German foreign intelligence.

The tourists - a couple from Switzerland, a 77-year-old German woman and a British man - were kidnapped at gunpoint when an armed group stopped their car in a remote part of Mali on January 23.