A Sudanese Christian woman who was sentenced to death for renouncing Islam, then acquitted after intense international pressure, arrived on Thursday in Italy with her family en route to the United States.

Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag was greeted in Rome by Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and his wife as well as Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini.

Church properties have been bulldozed and seized in a climate of growing harassment of minority Christians in Islamist-run Sudan since the south's 2011 independence, its council of churches said.

Kori Elramla Kori Kuku, general secretary of the Sudan Council of Churches, told AFP that harassment has been on the rise ever since the separation three years ago of South Sudan, whose population follow mainly Christian and traditional beliefs.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday named Danish diplomat Ellen Margrethe Loj to head the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan and act as his special representative.

Loj, who replaces Norway's Hilde Johnson, takes up the job amid a flare-up of fighting in South Sudan ignited by a power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar.

Twenty-seven people were killed in Sudan on Monday when a bus and a transport truck collided south of the capital Khartoum, police said.

The crash happened near Al Gutayna, about 90 kilometers (56 miles) from Khartoum in White Nile state.

Rebels in Sudan's Darfur on Monday denied killing 13 civilians, calling government claims of their involvement a fabrication.

The official news agency SUNA said the "innocent citizens" died on Saturday in an ambush on a commercial convoy about 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of El Fasher, the North Darfur capital.

Britain expressed hope on Sunday for a "proper" probe into an assault by armed men who left a Sudanese newspaper editor in hospital.

Gunmen raided the al-Tayar daily on Saturday evening and severely beat chief editor Osman Mirghani, who had called for normalization of ties with Israel.

Armed men raided the offices of a Sudanese newspaper on Saturday evening and severely beat the chief editor who had called for normalization of ties with Israel, a colleague said.

The violence against Osman Mirghani, chief editor of the Al-Tayar daily, was an unusual physical attack against a journalist in Sudan, although reporters regularly complain of censorship by the National Intelligence and Security Service.

Three Sudanese employees of international aid agencies were released on Saturday in the troubled Darfur region after 32 days in captivity, peacekeepers said.

About 200 people in Islamist-run Sudan on Friday called for "jihad" at a demonstration against an Israeli assault on Hamas in the Gaza strip.

The peaceful demonstration took place outside the Grand Mosque in central Khartoum following Friday prayers.

Worsening conflict in Darfur and an influx of people fleeing war in South Sudan helped push to almost seven million the number needing aid in Sudan, the U.N. said Wednesday.

The figure is a jump from the United Nations' previous estimate of 6.1 million, issued last year.