Clashes between two ethnic groups in Sudan's Darfur have left several people dead, their leaders told AFP on Friday, with both sides giving conflicting accounts of the clashes.

The Arab Zayadiya tribe and the Berti, a non-Arab group, have been battling with heavy weapons around the Mallit area north of El Fasher, the state capital of North Darfur.

South Sudan's army and rebels have stepped up the kidnapping of children to fight in the country's civil war, with hundreds snatched from villages in the last month alone, the U.N. children's agency said Friday.

Providing the most detailed account yet of the country's child soldier crisis, UNICEF said it believed there were now more than 12,000 children in government and rebel ranks across the country.

The United Nations and Sudan began talks in Khartoum Tuesday to prepare for an eventual orderly withdrawal of U.N./African Union peacekeepers from Darfur, a senior U.N. official said.

Herve Ladsous, head of U.N. peacekeeping, said the team in Khartoum would set up a working group that would "look at the process for the exit of UNAMID (U.N.-African Union Mission in Darfur) eventually."

South Sudan's rebels confirmed Tuesday they were engaged in renewed heavy clashes with government forces in the country's oil-rich north, but accused their rivals of initiating the fighting.

The statement came the day after the government claimed it had killed scores of rebels after they attacked around the town of Renk in Upper Nile State, in what appeared to be some of the worst violence since peace talks broke down earlier this month.

Four individuals were charged on Monday for facilitating the illegal travel of migrants to Italy via Libya, the state-run National News Agency reported.

South Lebanon Prosecutor Judge Rahif Ramdan issued the charges against Palestinian Hasiba al-Hussein, and Lebanese Ghinwa Abou Zainab and Rita Razzouq, who were detained last week in the port city of Sidon, said NNA.

The Internal Security Forces Intelligence Branch detained on Thursday three women in the southern port city of Sidon linked to the smuggling of Lebanese and Palestinian people to Italy on a ferry traveling from Libya.

Two Lebanese women identified as Ghinwa Z. and Rita R., who own a traveling agency, and a Palestinian female Hasiba H. were arrested by police in Sidon, media reports said.

Sudan has failed to arrest its long-time leader Omar al-Bashir for genocide and war crimes, the International Criminal Court ruled on Monday, referring the matter back to the U.N. Security Council.

Bashir, 71, is wanted by The Hague-based ICC, the world's only permanent court, for his role in the western Sudanese region of Darfur where insurgents rose up in 2003 in an ongoing conflict that has left more than 300,000 people dead.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon is proposing a one-year test period to determine whether the troubled U.N.-AU mission in Sudan's Darfur can be salvaged, in a report released Friday.

In the special review to the Security Council, Ban said the 15-member council will face "hard decisions" if the mission remains ineffective after a year.

The foreign ministers of Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia said early on Friday they had reached the basis of an agreement on the sharing of Nile waters and Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam.

"A full agreement has been reached between our three countries on the principles of the use of the eastern Nile Basin and the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam," Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Karti told reporters early on Friday morning.

Peace talks aimed at ending 15 month of civil war in South Sudan appeared stalemated on Thursday with hours to go before a regionally-imposed deadline for a deal expires.

Hopes of an agreement were dealt another blow as President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar pulled out of their discussions, promising to reconvene mid-afternoon.