"We were surprised by the tragic news that Renamo unleashed an armed attack," said Jose Pacheco, the ruling Frelimo's chief negotiator with Renamo.

Talks were set up after military skirmishes in April.

"We condemn this attack and warn that this attitude does not help democracy," Pacheco, who is also agriculture minister, was quoted as saying by Radio Mozambique.

Five soldiers died and two were wounded in an attack on an arms depot near the coastal city of Beira early Monday morning, according to state media.

"We received five bodies. They were the victims of shooting," Beira Central Hospital spokesman Orlando Jamal told Radio Mozambique.

He confirmed two more soldiers were wounded in the attack, one of them seriously.

Other reports suggested six deaths, but officials weren't immediately available to confirm the casualties.

The attack occurred at the start of new talks between the two former civil war foes and amid Renamo's renewed militarisation.

Six previous rounds of talks have failed to yield a breakthrough on any of the major issues on the table, including Renamo's threat to boycott upcoming polls if the election law isn't amended.

Relations between the parties have been tense since the end of a 16-year civil war in 1992.

But Renamo lawmakers appeared to have been caught off guard by the news.

"I have no knowledge of this attack," the party's head negotiator, Saimone Macuiana, said Monday.

The attackers made off with an unspecified number of weapons from the military arsenal according to wounded soldiers interviewed by independent local television STV.

The attack bears a strong resemblance to raids carried out by Renamo rebels during Mozambique's civil war on government armouries.

The raid briefly shut down the crucial Sena railway line, which transports coal from mines in the northwest to Beira port.

"Yesterday all trains using the Sena line received instructions to interrupt their circulation at 7:30 am (0530 GMT) and to restart at 14:00 hours (1200 GMT)," Acucena Paul, spokeswoman for Brazilian miner Vale, told AFP.

British-Australian Rio Tinto also uses the line to export coal from its operations in Tete province.

Among the new appointees were members of the Muslim Brotherhood from which Morsi hails, the reports said, in a move that tightens the group's grip on key administrative and security posts.

The reshuffle which affects all but 10 of Egypt's 27 regions comes less than a fortnight before opposition protests demanding the departure of the Islamist president.

In a decree issued late Sunday, Morsi said the new governors would take their oaths on Monday, the newspaper reports said.

Independent daily Al-Masri Al-Yom said seven of the new governors were Brotherhood members.

The new Luxor governor was identified as Adel al-Khayyat of the Construction and Development party, a branch of Gamaa Islamiya which was blamed for a spate of attacks in the 1990s before it renounced violence.

Gamaa Islamiya claimed responsibility for an attack on the major tourist attraction at Luxor, in southern Egypt, that killed 58 foreign holidaymakers in 1997.

Morsi also chose new governors for second city Alexandria and Port Said -- a city at the northern entrance of the Suez Canal and site to sporadic unrest during the past two years.

In September last year, Morsi replaced 10 governors, appointing five Islamists in these vital positions once reserved almost exclusively for members of military or security services.

Al-Masri Al-Yom said the latest appointments were a sign of the "continued Islamisation" of state bodies, and represented a "challenge to the planned demonstration at the end of Tamarod (rebellion in Arabic) campaign".

The Tamarod campaign organisers say they have garnered millions of signatures asking for an early presidential election in order to oust Morsi.

They also plan to hold a demonstration in front of the presidential palace on June 30 the first anniversary of the inauguration of Morsi.

Mandela has been in a Pretoria hospital for a week, the fourth time the 94-year-old former president and anti-Apartheid leader has been admitted to hospital since December.

"We are grateful that he continues to get better," Zuma said. "Over the last two days, although he remains serious, his doctors have stated that his improvement has been sustained."

Zuma was addressing a gathering for Youth Day in eMadadeni in the KwaZulu-Natal province in remembrance of the 1976 Soweto youth uprisings against apartheid.

Mandela's repeated bouts of illness have reinforced a creeping realisation among South Africa's 53 million people that they will one day have to say goodbye to their first black president.

Mandela, popularly known by his clan name "Madiba", has a history of lung problems dating back to his time at the windswept Robben Island prison camp near Cape Town. He was released from prison in 1990 after 27 years behind bars and was president from 1994 to 1999.

Residents said heavy gunfire and explosions were heard. "The clashes lasted from 2 a.m. (0000 GMT) until 6 a.m. but are over now," Colonel Mohammed Sharif, of the special forces in Benghazi, told Reuters. He said six of his troops had been killed and another military official said five other soldiers were wounded.

It was not immediately clear who the protesters were and if any had been killed. Last week at least 31 people were killed and 100 injured in clashes between armed protesters, eventually backed by special forces, and a militia in the city.

The protesters had been demanding the disbanding of independent militias, and clashed with one of them the Libya Shield brigade, which fought to oust former leader Muammar Qaddafi and now says it is aligned with the defence ministry.

Several mosques condemned the protest against Libya Shield at Friday prayers and that may have spurred a reaction among the militia's supporters, a senior defence ministry source said.

Libya Shield commanders were not immediately reachable for comment. Hours before the latest fighting in Benghazi, a group of men forced their way into a different army compound to steal weapons, residents said.

And in a separate incident, an army sergeant was killed in an ambush on a military convoy in the southern Shaati area on Friday, a military official said. The assailants had tried to steal the military vehicles but fled after fighting broke out.

Libya remains anarchic and awash with weapons nearly two years after Qaddafi was toppled. Tensions have been rising between militias and the government, which is still struggling to assert its authority.

"Security forces from the armed forces and the military police will deploy on all main roads" on June 28 "to secure vital installations and public facilities", Al Gomhuria said, quoting a military source.

"The armed forces will not allow any confrontations that could lead to violence or drive the country into a spiral of blood during the June 30 protests," it said. "We are not with one side against another side."

Accusing Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood backers of seeking to dominate Egypt, the opposition is demanding early presidential polls to cut short his four-year term.

Islamist supporters of Mursi plan to hit the streets on Friday in what they have billed as a rally against violence.

The street protests are expected to be Egypt's biggest since the second anniversary of the uprising against Hosni Mubarak on Jan. 25, when anti-Mursi unrest turned into days of violence.

Mursi's most extreme critics have been urging the army to remove him from power, demanding the type of intervention that led to Mubarak's downfall at the peak of the 2011 uprising. The army has signalled it intends to stay out of politics.

Last month, the head of the army, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, said: "No one is going to remove anybody," adding that the army was not the solution to Egypt's political problems.

Citing the military source, Al Gomhuria said tools at the army's disposal ranged from imposing a curfew to martial law, "especially if matters slip out of control and red lines are crossed that threaten Egyptian national security".

The Egyptian army spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

The military deployed in January in cities near the Suez Canal during the second anniversary protests. The violence was exacerbated by a court ruling sentencing to death 21 soccer fans from Port Said over a soccer stadium disaster in 2012.

The Republican Guards also deployed outside the presidential palace in December to separate protesters when violent, anti-Mursi protests erupted there.

The Islamists accuse the opposition of seeking to unseat an elected leader through undemocratic means. The opposition, made up mostly of liberal and leftist parties, says Mursi has betrayed promises to govern through consensus.

The comment by Mandla Mandela was the latest indication that the health of his 94-year-old grandfather, South Africa's first black president, was showing signs of improvement. Mandela has been receiving visits from family members after he was rushed to hospital a week ago with a recurrence of lung problems.

"Madiba is recovering very well and looks good," Mandla Mandela said in Qunu, a village in the Eastern Cape province where Mandela was born and spent his early years.

Speaking in Xhosa at a funeral of another relative, Mandla used the clan name 'Madiba' by which Mandela is popularly known.

"I thank the nation and the world for the prayers for Madiba, and the doctors and the office of the ANC for keeping the family updated," he said.

South Africa's government said on Thursday that Mandela was continuing to recover but his condition remained serious.

Mandela's hospitalisation is his fourth since December and has reinforced growing awareness among South Africa's 53 million people that they will one day have to say goodbye to the father of the "Rainbow Nation" created from the ashes of apartheid.

Mandela has a history of lung problems dating back to his time at the windswept Robben Island prison camp near Cape Town. He was released in 1990 after 27 years behind bars and went on to serve as president from 1994 to 1999.

"The clashes lasted from 2:00 a.m. (0000 GMT) until 6:00 a.m. but are over now," Colonel Mohammed Sharif, of the special forces in Benghazi, told Reuters. "Five soldiers were killed."

It was not immediately clear who the protesters were and if any had been killed.

A sluggish tourism sector helped boost Mauritius's current account deficit to 6.8 billion rupees ($221.1 million) for the first three months of this year, from 4.2 billion rupees in the same period in 2012.

Revenues from tourism fell by 20.9 percent year-on-year to 8.8 billion rupees in the first quarter, the central bank said, narrowing the services surplus.

"The services surplus witnessed a steep decline of 36.3 percent to 6.1 billion rupees in the first quarter of 2013 from 9.6 billion in the corresponding quarter last year," the Bank of Mauritius said in a statement on Friday.

The merchandise trade deficit narrowed by 11.5 percent to 15.2 billion rupees.

Famed for its white sand beaches and luxury hotels, Mauritius is shifting from an economy traditionally focused on sugar, textiles and tourism towards offshore banking, business outsourcing, luxury real estate and medical tourism.

Unidentified gunmen attacked a pickup truck laden with passengers late Tuesday near Qooqae in the northeastern Mandera region, a troubled area hit by multiple attacks in recent months, local police chief Joseph Tenai said.

"The survivors have told us they were attacked when the gunmen emerged from a bush and sprayed the vehicle with bullets, killing four people on the spot," Tenai said. "The bodies of two other people were found this morning."

Those killed include schoolchildren, although Tenai could not say how many. Four other people are believed missing.

The attacks are the latest in a series of grenade blasts or shootings to have hit Kenya.

While no group claimed responsibility, Kenyan police have previously blamed similar attacks on supporters or members of Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab insurgents.

Most attacks have been along Kenya's volatile northeastern border with Somalia, although both Nairobi and Mombasa have been targeted as well.

Kenyan troops invaded southern Somalia in 2011 to attack Shebab bases, and have now joined an African Union force to battle the extremists there.

Kenya's invasion however sparked an angry reaction and warnings of revenge from the Islamists.

Kenya is also backing a controversial warlord in the southern Somali region, opposed by militia forces from rival clans.

"President Jacob Zuma last night, 10 June 2013, met with the medical team that is treating former President Nelson Mandela, and they gave him a thorough briefing. The former president is still in a serious, but stable condition."