Nairobi/Khartoum - At least 24 people died and over 50 were injured after Sudanese security forces opened fire inside a refugee camp in Sudan's restive Darfur province, a United Nations official said Tuesday, confirming earlier reports from Sudanese rebels.

The Sudan Liberation Army Monday said that at least 27 people died in the Kalma camp - near the capital of South Darfur, Nyala - when Sudanese troops opened fire indiscriminately.

However, South Darfur state's security committee, in a statement released through state news agency SUNA, said that nobody was killed in the incident. It said that police were fired upon as they tried to seize a rebel weapons' cache inside the camp.

Nairobi/Khartoum - The joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission (UNAMID) in Sudan's restive Darfur province said Monday it was checking up on claims that Sudanese troops had killed dozens in a refugee camp.

The BBC, quoting a rebel spokesman, said that Sudanese troops opened fire killing 27 people in the Kalma camp, where almost 100,000 people live after fleeing fighting.

"We have our people inside the camp and they are assessing the situation," UNAMID spokesman Noureddne Mezni told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.

Various sources put the death toll in the camp, which is near Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, both higher and lower.

Phnom Penh - The resolution of an ongoing corruption scandal at a joint Cambodian-UN court set up to try former Khmer Rouge leaders was the only barrier to direct US funding of the court, the outgoing US ambassador said at a press conference Monday.

Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli, ending a three-year mission in Cambodia, told reporters at the US embassy that he was convinced the tribunal was on the right track.

"The Khmer Rouge tribunal is making slow progress but it is going in the right direction," he said.

"We want to support and fund the Khmer Rouge tribunal directly, but we cannot until we are convinced it is a real tribunal ... and will give Cambodian people a real chance at justice."

Yangon - UN special envoy to Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari left Myanmar Saturday after six days in the country but failed to see opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Gambari, who added a sixth day to his five-day trip in an effort to meet with the National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Suu Kyi, gave no reason why they didn't meet.

NLD spokesman U Nyan Win said that the meeting depended on three parties, the UN, the Myanmar government and Suu Kyi herself, but he did not elaborate.

"Some people said it only depended on Aung San Suu Kyi but that is not true," he said in a telephone interview.

Nairobi, Mogadishu  - The United Nations Special Representative for Somalia Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah on Saturday condemned the killing of civilians, as Islamic insurgents seized a major town after a bloody battle.

Over 50 died, hundreds were injured and thousands forced to flee as Islamic insurgent group al-Shabaab seized control of the strategic port of Kismayo, which lies around
500 kilometres south of Mogadishu.

Al-Shabaab took over the city on Friday after three days of bloody battles with local clan militia that saw businesses shut down and bodies littering the street.

"The Islamic Courts and al-Shabaab control Kismayo," clan elder Abdi Bashi told Mogadishu-based Radio Garowe.

Tbilisi/Geneva - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres arrived in South Ossetia on Friday on a visit to ascertain the humanitarian situation in the area, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday.

The visit to South Ossetia concludes Guterres' four day visit to the region, which included meetings with government officials in the Georgian capital Tbilisi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.