Nairobi- Somali pirates on Monday seized a Philippine- flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden as the European Union agreed to send a fleet of anti-piracy frigates to the region, a maritime official said Tuesday.

Andrew Mwangura, of the Kenya-based East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme, said that the Stolt Strength was hijacked on Monday along with its 23 Filipino crew.

The Stolt Strength's sister ship, the Stolt Valor, was also seized in the Gulf of Aden two months ago.

Nairobi  - More than 200 Somalian parliamentarians have found themselves stranded in Nairobi, lacking the money to pay for air tickets for their return home, BBC reported Friday.

Citing a spokesman for the parliamentarians, who had attended an international conference in the Kenyan capital, BBC said that the UN Development Program (UNDP) on Thursday did pay the fares of 27 stranded delegates for a flight back to Mogadishu.

But the UNDP denied this.

Nairobi /Goma - A fragile ceasefire in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo has broken down as rebels who last week launched a major offensive once more battled the Congolese army, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the African nation said Thursday.

Rebel Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) called a ceasefire last Wednesday after its four-day offensive took it to the edge of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.

Nairobi - A regional summit on the conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo is to take place in Nairobi Friday, a Kenyan foreign ministry official said Wednesday, as renewed fighting continued for a second day.

"There will be a summit on Friday," Patrick Wamoto, head of the Kenyan Foreign Ministry's African and African Union Directorate, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "The agenda is DR Congo."

Nairobi  - A regional summit on the conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo is to take place in Nairobi Friday, a Kenyan foreign ministry official said Wednesday as small-scale fighting between rebels and pro-government militia continued for a second day.

"There will be a summit on Friday," Patrick Wamoto, Head of the Kenyan Foreign Ministry's African and African Union Directorate, told Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa. "The agenda is DR Congo."

Nairobi - In the tiny north-western Kenyan village of El-Hadi, two Gabbra pastoralists prepare to take their herd of bleating sheep and goats out to pasture.

The short rains have just come, and shoots of grass are springing up around the cluster of domed huts being warmed by the early morning sun.

At first glance, the scene seems to embody the pastoral idyll, but it belies serious problems in Kenya's arid north.

Population pressures, exacerbated by climate change, have led to constant armed clashes between tribes fighting for dwindling water sources and pasture.

The residents of El-Hadi, which sits in rocky terrain around 20 kilometres from the Ethiopian border, know all too well about the troubles.