The number of people affected by this month's flooding in Sudan has climbed to around 150,000 and is expected to rise further, the United Nations said on Monday.

More than half the victims, 84,000, are in the area around the capital Khartoum, said the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The number of people affected by this month's flooding in Sudan has climbed to around 150,000 and is expected to rise further, the United Nations said on Monday.

More than half the victims, 84,000, are in the area around the capital Khartoum, said the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Sudanese rebels said they attacked government forces in North Kordofan on Wednesday, days before a Khartoum deadline to halt South Sudan's oil exports over allegations it is backing the insurgents.

The Justice and Equality Movement, a Darfur-based group which is part of a wider rebel alliance, said it attacked a military convoy at Sidrah, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of El Rahad town.

Ethiopia and Egypt have agreed to hold further talks on the impact of an Ethiopian dam to quell tensions between the two countries, the foreign ministers of both nations said Tuesday.

"We agreed that we will start immediately on consultations at both the technical level... and the political level," Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr told reporters, after meetings in Addis Ababa with his Ethiopian counterpart Tedros Adhanom.

A Sudanese rebel alliance on Monday declared North Kordofan state a target of its widening anti-government offensive, as parliament met to discuss the attacks.

Except for occasional rebel forays over the border from the conflict-plagued Darfur region, North Kordofan had been largely free from insurgency.

The defense ministers of Sudan and South Sudan on Monday cut short talks on demilitarizing the tense border and other security issues but negotiations are going well, the South's minister said.

John Kong flew in from Juba on Sunday for talks with his Sudanese counterpart Abdelrahim Mohammed Hussein.

Six people were injured on Sunday as Sudanese police clashed with hundreds of protesters showing support for four dead students originally from the conflict-plagued Darfur region, Agence France Presse reported.

Many people were also detained by the security forces, and a bus owned by the Khartoum city government was torched, the reporter said.

The visit of two Iranian naval ships to Sudan reflects strong ties between the countries, Sudan's military said on Tuesday after Khartoum denied Iranian involvement in weapons manufacturing.

Sudan's links to Iran have come under scrutiny after Khartoum accused Israel of sending four radar-evading aircraft to strike the Yarmouk military factory in the heart of the capital at midnight on October 23.

An explosion and fire at a Sudanese munitions factory this week appears to have been caused by airstrikes, a U.S.-based non-profit monitoring group said Saturday.

The Satellite Sentinel Project started by Hollywood star George Clooney said satellite imagery showed six large craters, each approximately 16 meters (52 feet) across, at the Yarmouk military factory in the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

Sudan is a "dangerous terrorist state," a top Israeli defense official said on Thursday after the Sudanese government accused Israel of carrying out a deadly missile strike on a military factory in Khartoum.

Sudanese officials say the attack on the Yarmouk facility south of Khartoum, which took place at around midnight on Tuesday and killed two people, was carried out by four radar-evading aircraft.