U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry left late Tuesday on his first major tour of Africa focused on some of the continent's most brutal wars including the bloodshed in South Sudan. 

The trip, which will take in Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola, will seek to "encourage democratic development, promote respect for human rights, advance peace and security," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki has said.

Ugandan troops have captured a fugitive Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel officer and freed 10 hostages, the army said Tuesday, after battles with the elusive jungle insurgents.

Charles Okello was captured in the southeast of the Central African Republic, army spokesman Paddy Ankunda told AFP, describing him as a field commander of the "notorious" LRA.

When not plotting military strategy to seize South Sudan's crucial oil fields, sacked vice-president turned rebel chief Riek Machar spends time reading the economic and political history "Why Nations Fail".

Cynics might argue he would do better to simply look around his basic bush camp, where mutinous soldiers and an allied ethnic militia crammed with child soldiers ready themselves to attack government forces, as a brutal four-month-long civil war in which thousands of people have already been killed intensifies.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has thanked North Korea for providing military training, reports said Thursday, dismissing those who criticize a security deal which included training police and special forces.

"There are people who are not happy with them, but I have not seen any problem with them," Museveni said Wednesday, according to the Daily Monitor newspaper, speaking at the passing out parade of almost 700 police officers trained by the North Koreans.

The group of Islamist gunmen who stormed the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi last year, killing at least 67 people, may have entered Kenya from neighboring Uganda, a senior police official was quoted as saying Saturday.

Uganda's police chief, General Kale Kayihura, cited intelligence reports indicating that Uganda had been used as a transit stage. He added that Uganda was also still at risk of attack.

Thousands of Ugandans led by President Yoweri Museveni held a rally Monday celebrating tough new anti-gay laws, praising the bill despite international criticism and donor aid cuts.

"Thank you for saving the future of Uganda," read signs held by the demonstrators, who marched through the streets of the capital Kampala.

Ugandan officials were holding talks with the European Union on Friday over a controversial anti-gay bill that has left the east African nation facing sanctions and aid cuts.

Last month, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed a bill that calls for "repeat homosexuals" to be jailed for life, outlaws any promotion of homosexuality and requires people to report homosexuals.

More than 251 Congolese refugees perished in the weekend sinking of a crowded boat on Lake Albert, between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, Kinshasa said Thursday.

Government spokesman Lambert Mende also declared three days of national mourning starting Thursday in the wake of Saturday's disaster.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has ordered investigations into alleged atrocities committed by the army during 20 years of war against Lords Resistance Army rebels, officials said Wednesday.

Tens of thousands of people were killed and nearly two million displaced in the fight in northern Uganda between the rebels and security forces, before rebel chief Joseph Kony and key fighters shifted into neighboring nations around 2005.

Uganda said Tuesday it has recovered 107 bodies, including 57 children, after a boat capsized at the weekend on Lake Albert, on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The boat, which was packed with refugees from the DRC hoping to return home from a camp in Uganda, was believed to have been carrying up to 250 people when it overturned on Saturday.