Three Ethiopian peacekeepers were killed Thursday in an attack in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, the joint U.N.-African Union mission said, the latest deaths in increasingly dangerous peace operations in Africa.

They were guarding a well in Karma, North Darfur state, when they were attacked by gunmen, who fled afterwards, the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur said.

Inside the barbed wire, knee-deep mud sucks at the legs of the nearly 50,000 South Sudanese who live in the cramped, fetid camp, protected by United Nations peacekeepers.

Outside, in the war-zone state of Unity, citizens say they are too fearful to venture, frightened of revenge attacks in a civil war that entered its eleventh month Wednesday.

A court in the Sudanese capital's twin city of Omdurman has annulled the marriage of a girl wed at the age of five to a man in his 40s, a rights group said Friday.

"The Omdurman north court, presided over by judge Nizar Ahmed Abdullah, on Thursday annulled the marriage of the girl, Ashjan Yousef," who is now eight, said Nahed Jabrallah, director of the Sima center for women's and children's rights, who brought the case to trial.

Sudanese authorities have arrested a man on suspicion of murdering a Spaniard working at his country's embassy in Khartoum, who was found stabbed to death in his home, the police said Friday.

The victim was head of the embassy's visa section and had been living in the city for three years, police said.

A Spanish national working at his country's embassy was found Monday stabbed to death at his home in Khartoum, Sudanese police said, with the foreign ministry speaking of a "crime".

Police identified the victim as the head of the visa section at the Spanish embassy.

The scale of South Sudan's food crisis remains a massive unknown, with aid workers fearing the worst in isolated parts of the conflict-ravaged country, the international Red Cross said Thursday.

"The situation is critical," said Dominik Stillhart, director of operations at the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Red Cross said Monday that Sudan had ended a ban on its aid operations, imposed by the government in February.

In a statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Khartoum had opted to lift the suspension even though discussions on the issue had not yet wrapped up.

A move by war-torn South Sudan to turf out foreign workers has been met with shock, consternation and dire predictions that the country is being led towards total collapse.

The International Criminal Court on Thursday issued an arrest warrant against Darfur rebel leader Abdallah Banda, saying it was "unlikely" that he would voluntarily attend his war crimes trial, which was postponed indefinitely.

Banda faces three war crimes charges for his alleged role in an attack on African Union peacekeepers in September 2007 in northern Darfur. 

Predominantly Shiite Muslim Iran criticized Sudan Tuesday for shutting down its cultural centers in the country over alleged Shiite proselytism, saying they had been operating correctly.

On September 2, a Sudanese official said the centers had been ordered closed in response to "increased activity... in spreading Shiite Islam," the majority faith in Iran but a fringe one in overwhelmingly Sunni Sudan.