At least 98 people died when a boat capsized at the weekend on Lake Albert, which lies between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said Monday.

"Based on information UNHCR has received so far from the authorities and refugees, 41 people were rescued and 98 bodies recovered" after Saturday's disaster, the refugee agency said in a statement.

Washington is sending more special forces commandos and tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft to Uganda to help hunt for fugitive warlord Joseph Kony, The Washington Post reported.

At least four CV-22 Ospreys and refueling aircraft, as well as 150 Air Force special forces personnel and other airmen to fly and maintain the planes will arrive in the African country at mid-week, the Post reported on its website Sunday.

Uganda warned Tuesday that Somalia's al-Qaida linked Shebab insurgents were planning to use fuel tankers as bombs, one day after Kenya thwarted a "massive" car bomb attack.

Both Uganda and Kenya are key contributors of troops to the African Union force fighting the Shebab in Somalia, and the Islamists have carried out major attacks in both countries in retaliation in the past.

East African heads of state met in Addis Ababa Thursday in the latest push for peace in war-torn South Sudan, where almost three months of raging conflict has left thousands dead.

Leaders from the East African bloc, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), were hosted by Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn to "deliberate on the current situation" in the troubled fledgling nation, a statement read.

Sweden said Wednesday it would stop development aid payments to Uganda "because of the anti-gay legislation" passed in late February.

"The government reaffirms its strong condemnation of the Ugandan legislation that violates the fundamental rights of homosexuals, bisexuals and transgender people," Minister for International Development Cooperation Hillevi Engstroem said.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has thrown his weight behind Uganda's draconian anti-gay laws and hinted at a crackdown on gays in his own country, state media reported Monday.

He castigated the West for punishing Kampala with aid cuts after President Yoweri Museveni signed into law a bill that banned homosexuality in the east African country.

U.N. gunships targeted a base of the Ugandan Muslim rebel group ADF-Nalu in the eastern DR Congo for the first time Saturday, the U.N. force said.

The Congolese army had in recent weeks taken the lead in the drive to root out ADF-Nalu, one of the oldest but lesser known armed organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Uganda accused the World Bank of blackmail Friday after the lender stalled a $90 million loan over the east African nation's adoption of a draconian anti-gay law.

"World Bank is a multi-lateral institution that should not blackmail its members however small," government spokesman Ofwono Opondo said on Twitter.

Warring fighters in South Sudan have looted hospitals and murdered patients in their beds, cutting life-saving healthcare to hundreds of thousands of people, Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday.

Warning of an "alarming pattern of looting and attacks on patients" and health facilities, Doctors without Borders (MSF, Medecins sans Frontieres) said their crucial work was being strangled by a "climate of utter disrespect and fear."

An influential U.S. lawmaker on Tuesday proposed withholding aid to Uganda after the African nation's president signed a controversial new measure imposing life prison sentences for homosexuals.

"I am deeply concerned by the decision of President (Yoweri) Museveni of Uganda to sign into law the anti-homosexuality bill," Senator Patrick Leahy, the most senior member of the chamber and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.