Berlin  - A funeral took place Saturday for the first of 15 victims killed three days previously when a teenager went on a shooting spree at his former school in southern Germany.

Several hundred people attended the schoolgirl's funeral in the town of Winnenden, near Stuttgart.

"We can't comprehend the act that brought death upon her," a Catholic priest said during the girl's funeral service.

Kabul - A British soldier was killed in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan Saturday, the military said.

The soldier died of wounds he sustained from an explosion in Musa Qala district of southern Helmand province, a British military spokesman in the province said.

The British soldiers were conducting a foot patrol when the incident took place, he said, adding the soldier died on the spot despite receiving immediate medical treatment.

The NATO alliance in Kabul also confirmed the death of the soldier in a statement.

Rome/Paris  - Three western hostages who work for the international aid organization Doctors Without Borders have been set free, the Italian foreign minister said late Friday in Rome.

The government in Khartoum located the kidnappers despite their constant flight from one place to another, and negotiated with them to release the hostages.

Italian media reports said no ransom was paid.

A spokeswoman in Paris for the French-based Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF,) as the organization is formally known, did not confirm the release.

Dhaka  - At least seven persons were killed and 50 injured in a devastating fire Friday at Basundhara City, Bangladesh's largest shopping mall, in Dhaka, officials said.

Members of the rescue operation teams retrieved three more bodies from different floors of the building late in the evening, raising the death toll to seven, they said.

Firefighters earlier recovered three more charred bodies from inside the debris on the upper floors of the 21-storey building, in which the top five floors were destroyed, Tejgaon zone police chief Mahbubur Rahman said.

London - Northern Ireland bid a moving farewell to the police officer shot dead by suspected terrorists in a church service attended Friday by leading representatives of Sinn Fein, the party once closely linked to paramilitary terrorism in the province.

Police constable Stephen Carroll, a Catholic, was the first police officer to be murdered in Northern Ireland since 1998. His death also marked the first loss of an officer belonging to the new Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), formed in 2001.

Dhaka  - Authorities ordered the indefinite closure Friday of three educational institutions in the northern Bangladeshi city of Rajshahi after bloody clashes between rival student groups left one person killed.

The clashes broke out between the student fronts of the ruling Awami League and opposition Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami over establishing control over Rajshahi University campus.