Uganda said Saturday it was boosting security measures following fresh threats against the east African nation by Somalia's al-Qaida-linked Shebab rebels.

A statement by police said a new video purportedly from the Islamists and urging attacks in Uganda and Burundi -- nations that both contribute troops to the African Union's AMISOM force in Somalia -- has been circulated online.

Five people were killed in a new attack blamed on Ugandan rebels near Beni in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, officials said Tuesday.

More than 300 people, most whom have been hacked to death, have been killed during seven months of massacres in the troubled North Kivu province by Muslim rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).

The United Nations has sent reinforcements to its Democratic Republic of Congo peacekeeping force near the eastern town of Beni, after two soldiers were killed and 13 others wounded in an ambush Tuesday. 

"This morning we sent reinforcements to the Beni area -- a rapid response unit to back up those caught in ambush," Felix Prosper Basse, spokesman for the U.N.'s MONUSCO DRCongo mission, told AFP a day after two Tanzanian peacekeepers and two civilians were killed near Beni.

Uganda has requested the extradition of a rebel leader with alleged links to al-Qaida arrested in Tanzania, police said Wednesday, after saying they had confirmed his identity.

Officials said last month that Jamil Mukulu, leader of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) was being held in Tanzania but that they were awaiting formal confirmation of his identity from Interpol.

Troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo have killed 16 Ugandan rebels in two days of clashes in the troubled northeast of the country, a military spokesman announced on Tuesday.

"The provisional toll is 16 dead on the rebel side and two injured in the (Congolese army). Six AK-47s (Kalashnikov assault rifles) were recovered," Major Victor Masandi of operation Sokola 1, which hunts the foreign rebels, told Agence France Presse.

The leader of a Ugandan rebel group with alleged links to al-Qaida has been arrested in Tanzania, state-owned Ugandan media reported Thursday.

Uganda's New Vision newspaper said Jamil Mukulu, leader of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), was being held in Tanzania ahead of his extradition.

A leader of the Ugandan rebels accused of slaughtering over 300 people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been killed in a clash with government forces, authorities said Wednesday.

In overnight fighting between April 24-25, DR Congo soldiers in the restive North Kivu province killed Kasada Karume, number three in the leadership of Muslim rebels the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).

South Sudan's warring leaders must strike a compromise deal, the European Union's aid chief said Saturday, warning the international community was running out of patience over the country's civil war.

"The war and the blame games must stop, and they must stop now -- it is high time for peace," said EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Christos Stylianides, after travelling to both government and opposition strongholds in the war-torn country to plead with leaders to end fighting.

Five people were hacked to death overnight in the Beni region of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, an area where ruthless Ugandan rebels are active, an official source said Friday.

"Five people were killed with machetes," the administrator of the territory, Amisi Kalonda, said by telephone, reached from Goma, the capital of strife-torn North Kivu province.

Activists in Uganda have warned that a "dangerous" new bill seeking to regulate non-governmental organisations would silence critics and "negate the very essence of freedom of association and expression".

Rights groups say the proposed NGO bill would grant sweeping powers to the government, including the ability to shut down activist groups and jail members.