Egypt has imposed restrictions on women travelling to Turkey, months after introducing similar measures for men to stop them joining the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group.

Women aged 18 to 40 are now required to obtain a security clearance before going to Turkey, a senior police officer told the AFP news agency on Sunday.

“A security clearance can be acquired within 72 hours, and it is now mandatory for women travelling to this country (Turkey),” the officer said.

The restriction took effect on Thursday, a Cairo airport official said.

In March, Egypt’s state-sponsored Islamic authority, Dar al-Ifta, warned women against marrying ISIL fighters who wooed them over the internet to travel to ISIL-controlled territory in Syria.

The compulsory security clearance for men, introduced in December, applies to Libya as well as Turkey.

Blues legend BB King has died in Las Vegas at the age of 89, his attorney has said.

King, who inspired a generation of mainstream guitarists, died late on Thursday, triggering shockwaves across social media, with stars from the music world lining up to pay tribute.

The 15-time Grammy award winner was considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time, and influenced a generation of rock guitarists from Eric Clapton to Stevie Ray Vaughan, having released more than fifty albums and sold millions of records worldwide.

Riley B King was born on September 16, 1925 in Itta Bena, Mississippi.

Authorities said on Thursday that Wednesday’s accident at El Tunel mine in the northwestern town of Riosucio was likely triggered by an explosion or power outage that disabled pumps used to extract water and supply oxygen to work crews as deep as 27 metres below ground.

Al Jazeera’s Alessandro Rampietti, reporting from the scene, said: “Over 40 hours into the rescue operation the rescue teams have not Been able to reduce the level of the water.

“That’s because the water from the river is filtering into the mine from underneath. The rescuers say it is very unlikely to find anyone alive.”

Yeison Gutierrez, 34, said he was able to save several colleagues because he was one of the few miners who knew how to swim. But one co-worker slipped through his hands and didn’t make it above ground.

“I swam to the surface fighting against the water and the air pressure, that’s how we were saved,” Gutierrez told the AP news agency from the mine where he was assisting rescuers.

President Juan Manuel Santos called on rescuers to “spare no effort” in the search.

Family members huddled near the mine through the night as crews used pumps to remove water that had raced into three vertical shafts from the adjacent Cauca river.

Authorities said it could take at least three days to clear the mine.

Forty-five people have died in a huge blaze at a footwear factory in the Philippine capital and 26 others remain missing, authorities said on Thursday, as grieving relatives described sweatshop conditions and poor fire safety standards.

Rescue workers pulled dozens of corpses out of the ruins of the two-storey building in Manila, many of whom were believed to have been trapped on the second floor after the blaze broke out just after noon on Wednesday.

“Many of those retrieved were reduced to skulls and bones,” national police chief Leonardo Espina said during an emotional press conference, as city authorities confirmed that 45 bodies had so far been found.

“Someone will definitely be charged because of the deaths. It doesn’t matter if it’s an accident, people died. Right now, we are investigating to clearly define what happened. For sure, someone will be charged.”

Sparks from welding equipment used to repair a broken gate are believed to have caused the fire when they ignited flammable chemicals stored nearby.

The building, among a long row of factories in the rundown district of Valenzuela on the northern edge of the Philippine capital, made cheap slippers and sandals for the local market.

The footwear had names such as “Havana” that sound like well-known global brands, company employees said.

– No safety standards –

The factory workers toiled for as little as 300 pesos (US$6.70) a day routinely surrounded by foul-smelling chemicals and were not aware of fire safety standards, survivors and relatives said.

“The families can’t help but be angry about what happened. We will never forget this,” Rodrigo Nabor, whose two sisters were inside the factory and remain unaccounted for, told AFP.

Nabor was among relatives of factory workers waiting for body bags at a village hall that had been converted into a makeshift morgue.

“I’ve lost hope that they survived,” said Nabor, 31, who works at a nearby plywood factory.

“I can’t explain how I’m feeling. I didn’t sleep at all last night. I just kept walking around the factory hoping for news.”

Nabor said his sisters, Bernardita Logronio, 32, and Jennylyn Nabor, 26, often complained of foul-smelling chemicals in their workplace.

“They said they keep an electric fan on to drive some of the smell away,” he said.

Nabor said their pay depended on how many sandals they finished, which could be as little as 300 pesos a day. Nabor’s sisters each had a young child.

One survivor, Janet Victoriano, signalled lax fire safety standards may have contributed to the high death toll.

“I had never been involved in a fire drill ever,” Victoriano, who had worked at the factory for five years, told DZMM radio.

Victoriano said she was able to escape because she was near the front door when the blaze started.

“The building was totally damaged, the roofs caved in and portions of the second floor collapsed,” the city’s fire marshal, Senior Superintendent Rico Kwantiu, told AFP.

Valenzuela mayor Rex Gatchalian told reporters that rescue workers would continue scouring the building on Thursday for the 26 people still missing, while also checking to see whether they had escaped.

“The city government is still praying and hoping some of them must have gotten out,” Gatchalian said.

Deadly fires regularly rip through the poor shanty areas of the Philippine capital, where there are virtually no fire safety standards.

In the deadliest fire in Manila in recent times, 162 people were killed in a huge blaze that gutted a Manila disco in 1996.

Five Libyan army soldiers were killed and two others injured on Monday in clashes against the Islamist armed coalition Libya Dawn near the capital of Tripoli, said military sources.

The clashes took place in Assayad area, some 20 km west of Tripoli, where the Libyan army attempted to slowly progress toward the capital, an army officer said on condition of anonymity.

In last August, Tripoli fell into the hands of Libya Dawn which established its own government to confront the internationally recognized one, currently in exile in the eastern town of Tobruk.

The Libyan army has been trying to regain control of the capital from Libya Dawn militias since March.

A 6.8-magnitude earthquake has struck off the coast of northeastern Japan, the US Geological Survey has said, but authorities have not issued a tsunami warning and there were no immediate reports of damage.

The quake struck at 6:12am (21:12 GMT Tuesday) off the east coast of Japan’s Honshu island in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 38.9km, according to USGS.

Japan’s meteorological agency said there was no immediate tsunami threat from the earthquake, which hit 33km southeast of the nearest city of Ofunato.

Large areas jolted by the latest tremor were among those damaged by the 2011 quake and tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people and triggered a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima power plant.

Wednesday’s earthquake did not damage any of the nuclear reactors in the region, including those at the crippled Fukushima facility, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK said.

All of Japan’s reactors have been off-line since the Fukushima disaster.

Train services in the region, including “Shinkansen” bullet train operations, were temporarily suspended following the quake, officials said.