Nine Ugandan soldiers have been killed and 12 others wounded during a month fighting in South Sudan, the army said Tuesday, dismissing rebel claims to have killed scores.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni confirmed last week that troops had been killed during combat in the war-ravaged young nation in support of President Salva Kiir.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni views gays as "sick" but does not believe they should be jailed or executed and will block a push by parliament to impose tough penalties, his spokesman said Friday.

"He does not approve of homosexuality but he believes that these people have a right to exist," presidential spokesman Tamale Mirudi told Agence France Presse.

Uganda has confirmed its troops are fighting alongside South Sudan's government against rebels, as fresh details emerged Thursday of brutal ethnic killings in the conflict ravaging the world's youngest nation.

Ceasefire talks -- to end a more than a month-long conflict in which thousands have been killed -- are deadlocked amid squabbling leaders and rebel demands for the release of political prisoners.

Uganda's parliament endorsed Tuesday the government's decision to send troops to neighboring war-ravaged South Sudan, with the defense minister saying the army had help avert "genocide".

Ugandan troops deployed in South Sudan five days after fighting began last month, both to support President Salva Kiir and to help evacuate its citizens.

A group of seven Ugandan lawmakers on Wednesday accused President Yoweri Museveni of meddling in the escalating conflict in neighboring South Sudan.

Fighting erupted December 15 in South Sudan between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and rebels who have sided with his rival and former deputy Riek Machar.

The U.S. military on Tuesday deployed a small team of marines to Uganda to prepare for possible further evacuations of Americans from violence-wracked South Sudan, officials said.

Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren said a "platoon-sized" contingent of marines and a C-130 aircraft had been detached from a deployment in Djibouti and sent to Entebbe, Uganda.

Uganda troops have captured 19 Lord's Resistance Army rebels in Central African Republic (CAR), the African Union said, a sizable victory in the hunt for the elusive jungle insurgents.

The Ugandan army is leading a U.S.-backed African Union force tasked with capturing the LRA's leaders, several of whom are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday officially launched a surveillance drone in the strife-torn northeast in the first such move by the United Nations.

The Italian-made pilotless aircraft was launched at 12:01 pm (10:01 GMT) from the airport in Goma, capital of North Kivu province, at a media event attended by the chief of U.N. peacekeeping operations, Herve Ladsous and several diplomats.

Fighting between DR Congo's military and M23 rebels killed more than 900 combatants in the country's restive east before the insurgents were routed, a senior military official told AFP on Monday.

"Between May 20 and November 5, the... (army) had 201 dead and 680 wounded. On the M23 side, there were 721 dead and 543 captured, including 72 Rwandans and 28 Ugandans," said General Jean-Lucien Bahuma, a senior commander in the North Kivu region where the fighting took place.

The president of Central African Republic has told the United Nations he has negotiated with Joseph Kony, even as an African force hunts the war crimes suspect, a U.N. envoy told Agence France Presse.

Abou Moussa, a U.N. special envoy, said in an interview that Kony may be sick and that Central African Republic president Michel Djotodia had told him this month he has sent food to Kony.