Moscow/Kiev/Nairobi - Three Somali pirates were shot dead in an apparent argument with their mates aboard a hijacked Ukrainian cargo ship carrying tanks, the Itar-Tass news agency reported on Tuesday.

None of the 20 crew being held hostage on the freighter Faina were injured in the exchange of fire stemming from a alleged dispute between the pirates, according to a Moskovskiy Bulletin news report.

The cargo ship remained anchored near the island of Hobyo off the Somali coast. There was no damage reported to the vessel's cargo, including depleted uranium anti-tank shells, armoured personnel carriers, and 33 T-72 tanks.

Nairobi/Khartoum  - A helicopter contracted by the joint African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) has crashed, killing at least two of the occupants, the UN said Monday.

UNAMID spokesman Kemal Saiki said that the helicopter, which was delivering rations to UNAMID bases, had come down near the Kalma refugee camp in Sudan's restive western province.

Two of the occupants were confirmed dead, while the other two were presumed to be trapped inside the wreckage.

There was no information on the nationality of the four.

Nairobi  - Three warships are hemming in Somali pirates who hijacked a Ukrainian cargo ship carrying tanks and other military supplies, a US Navy official said Monday.

"There are now three ships in the vicinity," Lieutenant Nathan Christensen, Deputy Spokesman for the US Navy's fifth fleet, told Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa.

The MV Faina, along with its cargo of 33 T-72 tanks, armoured personnel carriers and munitions, was seized late Thursday off Somalia as it headed for the Kenyan port of Mombasa.

The USS Howard was the first warship to make visual contact with the seized vessel, which is anchored off the Somali coast near the port of Hobyo.

Nairobi - Ugandan rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has denied reports it recently launched attacks and abducted children in both the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

"The recent media reports of LRA attacks are fabricated and dangerous imaginations formulated by those bent on stifling the current peace process between Uganda and LRA," rebel spokesman David Nyekorach-Matsanga said in a statement.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) on Tuesday demanded the immediate release of 90 schoolchildren it said the LRA had abducted in DR Congo the previous week.

The LRA is notorious for kidnapping children and forcing them to fight or become sex slaves.

Nairobi - Pirates have seized a Ukrainian cargo ship carrying tanks off the coast of Somalia, a maritime official confirmed Friday.

"The ship was grabbed yesterday evening as it sailed to (the Kenyan port of) Mombasa," Andrew Mwangura of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "It was carrying military equipment, including tanks."

The Russian Interfax news agency late Thursday reported that the Belize-flagged vessel was carrying a shipment of 30 T-72 tanks, armoured personnel carriers and munitions. The shipment was bound for South Sudan.

Nairobi/Khartoum  - Twenty-one refugees are believed to have drowned after an overloaded boat capsized in a Sudanese river, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Wednesday.

Eyewitnesses told UNHCR that the refugees were part of a larger group that tried to cross the Atbara River, near the Shagarab refugee camp in eastern Sudan, on Tuesday night.

One of four boats, designed to carry 15 passengers but crammed with 26, overturned 600 metres from shore.

Four Eritrean men and one Somali woman survived. The bodies of the other 21 are yet to be recovered.