New York  - The International Criminal Court's prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo urged world leaders attending the UN General Assembly on Monday to seek measures to protect civilians in Sudan's Darfur region while the court is prosecuting those charged with crimes there.

Moreno-Ocampo planned to speak in debate on the ethnic war in Darfur, which has killed more than 300,000 people since 2003. In July he asked the ICC at The Hague to issue a warrant to arrest Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for the killing of Darfurians.

Mexico City  - Public prosecutors suspect that some of the 24 men found murdered 10 days back near Mexico City were construction workers who were building a tunnel across the US border for the Sianloa drug cartel, it was reported Monday.

The workers were abducted from their homes in El Olivo, a poor suburb in western Mexico City on September 10. They were found dead two days later.

The previous week, police discovered a tunnel to transport drugs from Mexicali in Mexico to Calexico in the US state of California.

Peshawar - At least nine army troops were killed on Monday in a suicide attack in north-west Pakistan, officials said.

Army spokesman Major Murad Khan told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that a bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into security forces' headquarters located in Madyan area of restive Swat valley in North West Frontier Province.

"Three soldiers were martyred at the spot while six succumbed to their injuries in the hospital," he said.

Moscow  - The Russian Orthodox Church said it was "appalled" Monday by a proposal to set again in front of the secret service headquarters in central Moscow the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka, the forerunner to the infamous Soviet era secret service agency KGB.

When the statue of the man known as Iron Felix was uprooted with the end of communism in 1991, it was for many a sign that the repression he sponsored was forever gone.

Peshawar - At least three army troops were killed and on Monday in a suicide attack in north-west Pakistan, officials said.

Army spokesman Major Murad Khan told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into security forces' headquarters located in Madyan area of restive Swat valley in North West Frontier Province. Six soldiers were also injured in the bombing, he added.

Earlier, thousands of people protested the killing of three civilians allegedly by army shelling.