Regional leaders meeting to end the chronic violence in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo failed to find a breakthrough, with Rwanda saying only that "steady progress" had been made.

DR Congo President Joseph Kabila and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame met Monday at a lakeside resort hosted by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, and also attended by the leaders of Burundi, South Sudan and Tanzania.

Regional heads of state began talks Saturday in an effort to find a lasting solution to chronic unrest in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo but less than a third of those invited turned up.

The mini-summit opened in the Ugandan capital a day late after officials said that regional defence ministers failed to agree on the proposals to be discussed and it was unclear what if anything they had decided.

Researchers reported progress Monday with an experimental drug cocktail that killed a record 99 percent of TB bacteria in two weeks and costs a fraction of existing treatments.

It may also, crucially, be compatible with AIDS medicine.

A German national of Turkish origin wanted by Kenya for suspected links to Somalia's Islamist rebel group Shebab has been arrested in Tanzania, police in both countries said Wednesday.

"Yes, we have arrested him. He is now in Dar es Salaam where we are interrogating him," a senior Tanzanian police officer said, asking not to be identified.

The search for the world's first malaria vaccine received a boost with the release of early results from a major clinical trial showing it cut risk by about half in African children.

The vaccine known as RTS,S is made by the British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline's lab in Belgium, and is the first of its kind to attempt to block a parasite, rather than bacteria or viruses.

At least 163 people died when a ferry capsized off the popular tourist archipelago of Zanzibar, but over 100 people are still missing, a minister said Saturday.

"We have recovered 163 people who have died and we have rescued 325 survivors," said Mohammed Aboud, Zanzibar's state minister for emergencies, dramatically updating an earlier death toll of 53.

Tanzanian police said Saturday they arrested a man who tried to sell his wife's head and other body organs including breasts and genitals.

Police said the man confessed during interrogation to killing his wife to sell her body parts because he heard that human organs were in demand in his Shinyanga region in the north of Tanzania.

A series of blasts leveled arms depots at a Tanzanian army base and killed at least 17 people, Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda said Thursday, in the second such incident in two years.

The blasts, which the prime minister said also left at least 145 people wounded, went off inside the Gongo la Mboto army base in Dar al Salaam late Wednesday and destroyed several arms and ammunition depots.