A ship loaded with U.S.-donated food that arrived in Sudan on Sunday will help to feed about 300,000 people uprooted by fighting this year in the Darfur region, the U.N. said.

The vessel delivered more than 47,000 tons of sorghum, a staple food in Sudan, donated by the United States Agency for International Development.

There are only 18 of them but the gendarmes in Bria, once the capital of the Seleka rebels, have become a living symbol of the Central African Republic state's efforts to rebuild.

The small paramilitary police unit has in recent days begun to patrol the streets of this key mining town of 75,000 people, northeast of Bangui.

South Sudan on Friday released four top leaders accused of rebellion and treason, dropping charges for attempting to overthrow the government in a move aimed at ending a four-month-old civil war.

President Salva Kiir said their release was the "price of peace", adding: "Even if we hang them they cannot compensate those who were killed."

Sudan called on Thursday for an investigation into the "assassination" of its nationals in a South Sudan oil town, where the U.N. has accused rebels of killing hundreds of civilians.

"The foreign ministry condemns assassination of the Sudanese nationals in Bentiu and calls for urgent investigation," the official SUNA news agency said in an SMS alert.

Thousands of people have fled renewed fighting in Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, adding to hundreds of thousands uprooted by conflict in the Darfur region this year, the U.N. said on Thursday.

Clashes between government forces and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N)in South Kordofan's Rashad district displaced about 6,700 civilians, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its weekly bulletin.

Rebels in South Sudan said Thursday they were closing in on key oil fields and two state capitals, predicting an imminent collapse of the government and a "bloodbath".

A statement from the rebel's spokesman, General Lul Ruai Koang, said forces battling President Salva Kiir captured the town of Renk, close to the border with Sudan, on Wednesday and were advancing on the Paloich oil fields.

Sudanese police has managed to seize 14 million Captagon narcotic pills that were smuggled from Beirut, following a tip-off from Lebanon's Central Anti-Drug Bureau.

According to a statement issued by the Internal Security Forces, the aforementioned bureau had obtained “confirmed intel about the smuggling of five containers carrying corn and Captagon from the Port of Beirut to Sudan.”

The White House expressed horror at what it called the "abomination" of spiraling violence in South Sudan's civil war, where rebels have been accused of massacring hundreds of civilians.

The rebels seized the town and oil-hub of Bentiu last week, unleashing two days of ethnic slaughter as they hunted down civilians sheltering in mosques, churches and a hospital, butchering dozens on the roadside, according to the United Nations.

Sudan's government and rebel teams met in Ethiopia Tuesday to restart the latest round of slow moving talks aimed at brokering peace in war-torn South Kordofan and Blue Nile, delegates said.

Talks, which broke off last month without result, reopened Tuesday with rebels saying they were doubtful of any swift progress.

The United Nations on Monday called for an investigation into the massacre of hundreds of civilians by rebel troops in northern South Sudan.

According to the U.N. mission in South Sudan, troops loyal to sacked vice president Riek Machar carried out the massacre last week in the oil town of Bentiu.