Johannesburg  - The outcry over a Chinese shipment of arms to crisis-hit  continued Wednesday with rights groups, churches and world leaders calling for an arms embargo on the southern African nation.

The Chinese-owned An Yue Jiang ship had been trying over the past week to find a port in southern Africa to offload a consignment of Chinese weapons and ammunition for onward transport to landlocked, unstable Zimbabwe.

Dockworkers in South Africa's Durban port and Mozambique's Maputo refused to touch the cargo on ideological grounds, while port authorities in Angola said the ship would be given no assistance there. Activists in Namibia have also vowed to block it docking in that country.

On Tuesday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman said the shipping company had recalled the ship because it could not make delivery but speculation over its course still raged Wednesday.

"There is a real risk that (the shipment) may lead to increased human rights violations in Zimbabwe," London-based rights group Amnesty International said in a statement.

Attacks on civilians by soldiers and youth militia loyal to embattled President Robert Mugabe, 84, have rocketed in the wake of disputed March 29 presidential elections, which opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, 56, says he won. His Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party says several of its members have been killed and hundreds injured in the violence.

Mugabe's party says the contest between Tsvangirai and Mugabe was too close to call and urged a runoff.

Expressing concern at "serious human rights violations" by soldiers and police against the opposition, Amnesty called for a suspension of small arms and security equipment sales to Zimbabwe until the violence had stopped and the rule of law been restored.

The European Union placed Zimbabwe under a weapons embargo in 2002 but there is no such ban at the United Nations level. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Britain "will promote proposals for an embargo on all arms to Zimbabwe."

The All African Conference of Churches said it was "saddened" by the ship and praised African countries for turning it away.

On Tuesday the United States said it urged southern African countries to refuse it a harbour berth and called on China to halt weapons sales to Mugabe's regime.

New York-based Human Rights Watch and British-based aid agency Oxfam have also called for the shipment to be aborted, with Oxfam saying the case was proof of the urgent need for an international Arms Trade Treaty.

Meanwhile, the whereabouts of the vessel, which is carrying 3 million rounds of ammunition for AK-47 assault rifles, 1,500 rocket-propelled grenades and 3,000 mortar bombs, was unclear Wednesday.

"We haven't had any credible information since last night which put it last night around 40 nautical miles off Simon's Town (south- west South Africa), Nicole Fritz, director of the Southern African Litigation Centre (SALC), told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"It has been moving slowly to conserve fuel," Fritz said, estimating that the vessel had enough fuel to get as far as Lobito in Angola, if it intended continuing its journey.

A spokesman for the defence ministry, Themba Radebe, put the vessel off South Africa's west coast without giving details.

Asked if the ship posed an environmental threat if reports that it was running low on fuel were true, a spokesman for the South African Maritime Safety Authority, Captain Saleem Modak said: "If it was, yes, but we don't have any evidence of that", adding SAMSA "does not track vessels."

SALC's Fritz, who helped mount a successful application to Durban High Court for an order barring the shipment crossing South Africa, said she had received reports that a South African navy replenishment vessel, the SAS Tafelberg, had left Simon's Town on Monday, despite being booked in for repairs.

It was not possible to immediately confirm that report.

Reacting to reports that the ship had been recalled, an Anglican bishop in South Africa, one of the initiators of the court action against the ship in Durban, said Tuesday: "If it's true, it's the best news ever." (dpa)