Gunmen have shot dead 12 people at the Paris office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in an apparent militant Islamist attack. Four of the magazine’s well-known cartoonists, including its editor, were among those killed, as well as two police officers. A major police operation is under way to find three gunmen who fled by car. President Francois Hollande said there was no doubt it had been a terrorist attack “of exceptional barbarity”. The masked attackers opened fire with assault rifles in the o...

The UN security council rejected a Palestinian resolution demanding an end to Israeli occupation within three years after Israel and the US crucially intervened to persuade Nigeria to abstain from voting. Palestinian officials and other observers had thought Nigeria would back a Jordanian-tabled resolution, thereby delivering a nine-vote majority on the council which would have required a US veto to be blocked. Washington had been working strenuously to avoid having to use its veto. Until shortly before the vote on Tuesday, council diplomats h...

An AirAsia Indonesia airliner flying from Indonesia to Singapore with 162 people on board has gone missing. Flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control at 06:24 local time (23:24 GMT Saturday) over the Java Sea. The plane, an Airbus A320-200, disappeared midway into the flight of more than two hours from the city of Surabaya. No distress call was made. Bad weather was reported in the area, and an air search operation has now been suspended for the night. Planes from Indonesia and Singapore had been scouring an a...

Militants from the Pakistani Taliban have attacked a school in Peshawar, killing 141 people, 132 of them children, the military say. Pakistani officials say the attack is now over, with all of the attackers killed. A total of seven militants took part, according to the army. Scores of survivors are being treated in hospitals as frantic parents search for news of their children. The attack is the deadliest ever by the Taliban in Pakistan. There has been chaos outside hospital units to which casualties were taken, the BBC’s Shaimaa Khalil reports from Peshawar. Bodies have been carried out of hospitals in coffins, escorted by crowds of mourners, some of them visibly distraught.