Nairobi/Khartoum  - Rebels in Darfur said Wednesday that the Sudanese government had launched a major offensive against rebel strongholds in the north of the restive western Sudanese province.

According to the BBC, which quoted a leader of the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA), around 270 vehicles and several hundred of the notorious Janjaweed militia attacked a rebel-controlled city.

At least nine rebels and nine civilians have been killed in the fighting, the rebels said.

The Sudanese army refused to confirm the offensive.

Nairobi/Khartoum  - A United Nations-African Union helicopter has come under fire while on a peacekeeping mission in the restive Sudanese province of Darfur, reports said Monday.

A spokesman for the joint mission in Darfur UNAMID said that the aircraft was hit by gunfire, which damaged the radio system but caused no injuries, the BBC reported.

The helicopter was forced to return to its base in El Geneina, however.

Peacekeepers have come under increasing attack in recent months, with the most vicious strike claiming the lives of seven African Union troops in July.

Nairobi  - A suspected leading terrorist with links to the international al-Qaeda terrorist network managed to escape arrest in the Kenya capital over the weekend, The Standard newspaper reported Monday.

Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, thought to be a key figure in the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, returned to Kenya last week from Somalia, the report said, citing police sources.

He was in hiding in his house in the coastal village of Malindi and managed to flee just an hour before police arrived to arrest him, the report said.

Nairobi  - Medical humanitarian organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) is to withdraw from Sudan's troubled north Darfur region following a number of attacks on its personnel there, MSF said Friday in Nairobi.

"After these violent attacks, we have had to suspend activities and evacuate all our staff from Tawila and Shangil Tobaya," said Monica Camacho, MSF head of mission in Darfur.

Some 65,000 people, most of them driven from their homes, will be left without medical assistance as a result of the decision.

Nairobi/Mogadishu  - A Ugandan soldier from the African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Somalia was killed Friday by a bomb near the airport in the capital Mogadishu, an AU spokesman said.

The AU spokesman speaking from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa described the killing as "cowardly and barbaric." The soldier was searching the street for explosive devices when the blast occurred.

The AU mission in Somalia currently has 2,600 troops from Uganda and Burundi. The Horn of Africa country has been plagued by chaos and civil war since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled in 1991.

Nairobi  - People in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo province of North Kivu are still being subjected to violence, rape and being forced from their homes despite a peace pact signed at the end of January, a group of aid agencies said Tuesday.

At least 150,000 people have been forced during the intervening months to flee their home areas either to escape government forces or those of rebels, the group of 64 agencies said.