New York - The poor and developing countries who make up most of the UN General Assembly will get a chance on Thursday to face off against rich countries in a debate on the global financial crisis.

One target is the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Under the leadership of a former priest and foreign minister of Nicaragua's Sandinista government that fought the US in the 1980s, the assembly will demand a radical reform of those two institutions created at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in the 1940s to help countries recover from the devastation of World War II.

Nairobi/Kinshasa - Around 30,000 people fleeing battles between United Nations-backed Congolese troops and Tutsi rebels are pouring into refugee camps near the eastern city of Goma, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said Wednesday as fierce fighting continued.

UN helicopter gunships and armoured vehicles have been supporting Congolese troops north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, as renegade Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda's troops drive for the town.

Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) says it has driven the Congolese army back from the town of Kibumba, which lies about 20 kilometres north of Goma.

Mogadishu - Five suicide bomb attacks, including one on an Ethiopian embassy and one on a United Nations compound, rocked Somalia Wednesday, witnesses and the UN said.

Witness Farhaan Omaye told Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa that three near-simultaneous bombs went off in in Hargeysa, in the breakaway northern state of Somaliland.

The Ethiopian embassy and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) compound were targeted, as was Somaliland's presidential palace.

Nairobi/Kinshasa - Around 30,000 people fleeing fierce battles between Congolese troops and Tutsi rebels are pouring into refugee camps near the eastern city of Goma, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said Wednesday, as the rebels appeared to push back government forces.

UN helicopter gunships and armoured vehicles have been supporting Congolese troops north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, as renegade Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda's troops press toward the town.

Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) says it has driven the Congolese army back from the town of Kibumba, which lies about 20 kilometres north of Goma.

Manila - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday urged African leaders to take "very decisive" steps to end a standoff between Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

The 15-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) has called for an urgent summit to end the deadlock between Mugabe and Tsvangirai over a unity government aimed at ending Zimbabwe's political crisis.

Manila - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday called for an immediate end to fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has resulted in an upsurge of refugees.