Ramesh Pokharel, a teacher at Bajura district, 340 kilometres (212 miles) west of Kathmandu, said 104 school students and some teachers were taken by the rebels last Thursday from a school in Rameswori village to an unknown location.

Another 88 students were abducted from a school in Pujyatala village in Achham district, 360 kilometres (225 miles)

Eight people were killed in all and five injured in the incident on Saturday afternoon, Uruzgan governor Jan Mohammad Khan said.

"Yesterday in the late afternoon when the newly-appointed Deh Rawood district chief Khalifa Sadat was on his way back home from bazaar with his family, his vehicle ran over a landmine

ABIDJAN, Feb 1 (AFP) - French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin expressed confidence Sunday that a UN peacekeeping force would deploy "in coming weeks" to restive Ivory Coast, where some 4,000 French troops are monitoring a cease-fire.

On a flying visit to the west African state, a former French colony, de Villepin said he hoped that a UN force would deploy soon to lay groundwork for elections next year and assist with the disarmament of rebels whose uprising in September 2002 plunged the country into chaos.

"In coming weeks, UN troops will

He said that for US budgetary reasons, the figure of 8.2 billion -- which falls short of the Kabul government's

Despite the efforts of local teams and international organisations, the cholera outbreak has not diminished and is even showing a tendency to spread, the agency said.

The 11 dead were among 156 people taken ill in January with the disease, which spreads through contaminated water, food and drink.

A special crisis unit in the Mopti region

Gusmao, speaking after talks here with European Commission president Romano Prodi, said: "I believe that the secretary general would like to know better some of the aspects.

"Of course we need to exchange more opinions on the post-UNMISET period," he told reporters, referring to the United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor.

Annan said Thursday during a visit to

NAIROBI, Jan 29 (AFP) - A broad cross-section of Somali leaders on Thursday capped 15 months of talks by signing a landmark deal on how their war-ravaged country should be governed for the next five years.

There has been no national governance to speak of in the Horn of Africa country since 1991, when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted.

There followed 13 years of factional bloodletting that turned Somalia into the archetypal "failed state" and prompted botched military and humanitarian intervention by the United

The bombing was the first incident on the Chadian side of the border since the Sudanese military started air attacks on positions of rebels who have been fighting the government in Khartoum since February 2003.

The deaths came as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for an independent commission of inquiry to assess

"Around five million people, 64 percent of Zimbabwe's 7.8 million rural people, are estimated to be food insecure and requiring food assistance between January and March 2004," stated the report released late Wednesday.

According to the Famine Early Warning System, maize supplies in rural areas continue to be "erratic and inadequate".

"Although a wet spell has recently