Cairo - Egyptian security forces shot and killed on Tuesday two African men trying to illegally enter Israel at the Egyptian- Israeli Rafah border crossing, a security source said.

The source said that the two men, who carried no identification cards, were probably Sudanese.

Many African migrants transit through Egypt to seek asylum or work in Israel.

Since of the beginning of 2008, Egyptian police have arrested some 480 illegal migrants. The largest group arrested were Eritrean, with some 210 migrants.

Some 121 Sudanese migrants have been arrested since the beginning of the year. Thirty-six women and seven children have also been detained.

Nairobi - Some 3 million children are at risk of death, disease and malnutrition in the Horn of Africa as aid fails to flow, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said Friday.

More then 14 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda and Djibouti are critically affected, and the numbers are "on an alarming upward trajectory," UNICEF said.

"Strong national leadership is needed at this critical juncture, and more international funding must be quickly mobilized," UNICEF's Regional Director for East and Southern Africa Per Engebak said in a statement.

"The risks to children and their families are immense and we are running out of time to reverse them," he continued.

Valletta, Malta - A headline streams across The Times of Malta's online news portal: "Search is on for 70 missing migrants."

That was on August 27. There has since been no sign of the group despite an extensive search by two German helicopters and a Maltese army maritime squadron, part of the European Union's border patrol agency Frontex.

The 70 disappeared when they were swept off a flimsy craft which capsized after it left Libya, according to eight fellow-travellers who managed to cling onto the vessel long enough to be rescued.

It is one of the worst tragedies involving would-be immigrants in the Mediterranean - yet the Maltese newspaper's online readers' forum offered little, if any, compassion.

Dar-es-Salaam, Aug. 14 : An English university study has suggested that the snow cap on Mount Kilimanjaro may not disappear by 2020 or 2030 as had been claimed previously.

Xinhua quoted the field study done by the Portsmouth University on the mountain top as saying that the rate at which the snow cap is melting does not suggest that the snow cap will disappear in the near future.

The 11-day study on Mount Kilimanjaro was led by climatologist Nick Pepin who said that his team had found that the temperature on top of the mountain was considerably below zero degree centigrade, the agency quoted an African newspaper, as saying.

Nairobi/Ouagadougou - A mudslide at an illegal gold mine in Burkina Faso has claimed the lives of at least 31 miners, reports said Sunday.

Heavy engineering major Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd.