U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon will travel to Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya next week, leading a delegation from six other international organizations to the volatile Horn of Africa region.

The secretary-general will be joined by World Bank president Jim Yong Kim and by officials from the African Union, the European Union, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the African Development Bank and the Islamic Development Bank, a U.N. statement said Friday.

East African leaders met South Sudan President Salva Kiir on Wednesday in the latest push to end over 10 months of a civil war that has devastated the young nation.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Ugandan Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda visited the war-torn nation's capital on a one-day visit to discuss the "on-going peace process", a spokesman in Kiir's office told AFP.

U.S. Secret Service agents arrested a man after he fired a gun outside the Ethiopian embassy in Washington on Monday, U.S. media reported. 

Video shown by Ethiopian television ESAT shows a man standing by the embassy compound and brandishing what appears to be a handgun. 

Talks aimed at ending South Sudan's civil war resumed in Ethiopia on Monday, mediators said, as sporadic fighting continued to rage between rebel and government fighters in the oil-rich country.

The talks have been on hold since late August, when President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar signed a new ceasefire deal -- the fourth since fighting began nine months ago -- and forge a unity government by October 9.

Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia opened talks Monday to try to resolve a dispute over a hydro-electric dam being built by Addis Ababa on the Nile.

Cairo fears that Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance dam project could diminish its water supply.

Warring sides in South Sudan face "punitive sanctions," the rebels for killing a ceasefire monitor and the government for violating a truce, the top mediator of the stalled peace talks has warned.

The spiraling crisis in war-ravaged South Sudan has sent nearly 200,000 refugees into Ethiopia, making it Africa's largest refugee-hosting country, the United Nations said Tuesday.

At the end of July, Ethiopia was sheltering 629,718 refugees -- nearly half of them from South Sudan -- while Kenya, which has long been the biggest refugee host on the continent, counted 575,334 registered refugees and asylum seekers, the U.N.'s refugee agency said.

The United States lambasted South Sudan's warring factions on Monday after they missed a key deadline to forge a unity government.

Warring rivals in South Sudan missed a 60-day deadline Sunday to forge a unity government, despite warnings of famine and the threat of sanctions if fighting continues.

A former executive with a U.S.-based international adoption agency which sought to connect American families with Ethiopian children has admitted fraud, a U.S. Justice Department statement said Wednesday.