TEHERAN - IRAN has successfully test-fired a new generation of long range surface-to-surface missile using solid fuel, making them more accurate than its predecessors, the defence minister announced on Wednesday.

Mr Mostafa Mohammed Najjar said on state television that the Sajjil was a high-speed missile manufactured at the Iranian Aerospace department of the Defense Ministry. He said it had a range of about 2,000 kilometres.

MONTPELLIER (France) - FRENCH police say seven people were injured when explosives they were handling went off, causing a blast at a student housing unit.

Six injured from the blast early on Wednesday in the southern city of Montpellier have been taken to the hospital and are being treated for burns and burst eardrums.

KANDAHAR (Afghanistan) - ATTACKERS used a water pistol to spray acid at schoolgirls in Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar on Wednesday, hurting 15 of them, three seriously, the education ministry said.

Two teenage sisters were badly injured in the attack, one of them told a reporter at a hospital in the city, which has suffered a series of assassinations and bombings by the radical Islamist Taleban movement.