Kuala Lumpur, Sept. 13: A 21-year-old Indian national is facing a death sentence here for carrying drugs in the false bottom of his aluminium suitcase.

Alarm bells went off for customs officers at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang after they emptied the bag and found a false bottom in which five kg of ketamine powder worth RM175,000 were hidden.

The New Strait Times said that Customs deputy director-general Mardina Alwi and her officers stopped the man after they noted that the suitcase he was carrying seemed heavy and that he was having difficulty managing it.

New Delhi - At least 14 people were killed and 20 injured when a passenger bus plunged into a deep gorge in India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh, a news report said Friday.

The accident occurred in the Nellore district about 600 kilometres south-east of state capital Hyderabad on Thursday night.

Police told the IANS news agency that the bus, which was carrying 70 people from an extended family, fell into a 100-foot-deep gorge and got struck in trees.

Kabul - The US-led coalition said Friday that its forces killed more than 10 Taliban militants and detained two in operations targeting two rebel commanders in eastern Afghanistan.

The militants were killed Thursday in a raid against a Taliban subcommander in the Tag Aab district of the north-eastern province of Kapisa, the US military said in a statement.

"Coalition forces were engaged with small-arms fire from multiple groups of armed militants as they entered a compound," it said, adding, "The force returned fire, killing the militants."

Tokyo - The Japanese government plans to return imported rice to exporting nations if it is found to be inedible, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Seiichi Ota said Friday.

Japan's decision followed recent cases in which a Japanese company sold rice imported from other nations, including Vietnam, China and Thailand, that was tainted with mould or contained pesticide beyond a legal limit for edible use.

The firm bought the rice from the Japanese government for industrial use but sold it to make sake rice wine, distilled liquor or sweets.

Beijing - The death toll rose to 151 in a mudslide which buried a market and several buildings in the northern Chinese province Shanxi, the state-run Xinhua news agency said Friday.

Four days after the event, more than 3,000 rescuers, armed with spades and aided by 160 mechanical diggers, continued to search for victims buried under the heaps of dirt and mud.

Heavy rain caused a dam at a waste reservoir downstream of an illegally operating iron mine to burst, officials said earlier. About 268,000 cubic metres of mud covered an area of 30.2 hectares, destroying a market, an office building and several houses.

Islamabad - A suspected US missile strike on Friday killed at least 12 people, including women and children, in Pakistan's restive north-western tribal region bordering Afghanistan, officials said.

The attack targeting a house in Tolkhel village of the North Waziristan tribal district came as the Pakistani government and people were still fuming over previous US strikes in the area.

"Initial reports say at least a dozen people were killed when a single missile fired from a US drone hit the house just before dawn," a security official said on the condition of anonymity.

A local resident, Suleman, said six of the dead were women and children. At least 10 people were injured in the strike.