Nearly 200 African migrants were feared drowned today after a boat carrying them to Saudi Arabia caught fire off Sudan's north eastern coast, a state-linked news agency reported.

Sudan's president, wanted on a war crimes warrant, won pledges yesterday from China and its state-owned energy firm that they will continue investing in his country after its resource-rich southern region becomes independent next month.

A plane carrying Sudan's President to China was forced to turn back yesterday over Turkmenistan, delaying the scheduled visit of Omar al-Bashir, who has an outstanding international arrest warrant against him on war crimes charges.

North and South Sudan have signed an agreement to demilitarise the disputed Abyei region and allow in Ethiopian peacekeeping forces, former South African president Thabo Mbeki said yesterday.

When Baroness Cox takes up a cause, she invariably courts controversy. Her latest – a campaign against sharia law – is no exception. Jerome Taylor meets her

Sudan's government has ignored international appeals for a ceasefire to continue an offensive in the country's oil-rich central provinces that threatens to push the country back into civil war. Up to 60,000 people have fled bombing raids along the prospective border with southern Sudan as fighting intensified despite calls from US President Barack Obama for Khartoum to halt military operations.

North and South Sudan have agreed in principle to demilitarise the disputed central Abyei region and allow the deployment of Ethiopian peacekeeping troops in the area.

A Darfur-style crisis is unfolding on the border between north and south Sudan, aid workers have warned, with large-scale ethnic cleansing and bombing of civilians sparking a humanitarian alert.

Satellite images provide evidence that Northern Sudanese troops have committed war crimes, including ethnic cleansing, in the contested border town of Abyei where the forces took over more than a week ago, an advocacy group said yesterday.

The Norwegian photographer Espen Rasmussen has spent the past seven years documenting refugees and displaced people in different parts of the globe, from Congo to Colombia.

A top US official warned of a humanitarian crisis yesterday after tens of thousands of refugees fleeing south after the north's invasion of a disputed territory were running short of food, fuel and shelter.

South Sudan's President Salva Kiir called on North Sudan to withdraw its forces from the disputed Abyei region yesterday, but said there would be no war over the incursion and it would not derail independence.

Gunmen from an Arab tribe have fired on four United Nations helicopters taking off from a disputed town on the North-South Sudan border, while the President yesterday gave Northern troops approval to attack Southern forces if provoked.

Armed men burned and looted the flashpoint town of Abyei yesterday after days of violence involving northern and southern troops in the disputed region. Southern Sudan's military said it would defend its territory, while an Arab herdsman said his tribe is in Abyei to stay, an indication Sudan's peace could crumble before the south's July independence.