The Middle East's largest carrier, Emirates Airline, said Thursday it has decided to resume flights to Sudan from July 8 after a one-month suspension in the face of deadly unrest.

"After closely monitoring the situation in Sudan and conducting an exhaustive review of all operational factors, we have decided to resume our services to Khartoum," Emirates said in a statement. 

Sudanese anti-aircraft crews shot down an "aerial target" near Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman, a military spokesman said on Wednesday, after witnesses reported hearing explosions in the area.

An air base detected the target around 10:45 pm (1945 GMT) on Tuesday flying at low altitude over Omdurman's Wadi Sayidna military area, checked there were no civilian planes nearby and shot it down, military spokesman Colonel Al-Sawarmy Khaled Saad said in a statement.

Sudan's government on Sunday accused peacekeepers in Darfur of killing seven civilians, disputing the UN-African Union mission's version of events in which it said its forces had repelled two attacks by gunmen.

The U.N.-AU Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) had said 40 gunmen fired on a patrol in South Darfur's Kass area on Thursday, before the peacekeepers returned fire and killed four assailants, and another patrol came under fire the next day.

Sudan's military accused Juba of supporting rebels from Darfur after Khartoum's troops clashed with the insurgents in part of the war-torn region near the border between the two countries Sunday.

The army said the Justice and Equality Movement -- one of several groups battling Sudanese forces in Darfur since 2003 -- used South Sudan's Bahr al-Ghazal region as a base to enter neighboring Darfur on Sunday, where the two sides clashed.

Sudanese police used tear gas and batons to disperse hundreds of anti-government demonstrators gathered in a neighborhood of Khartoum on Tuesday for the funeral of an activist, witnesses said.

The protesters assembled in Shajara, a southern suburb of the capital, for the burial of an activist who died after being wounded when police broke up a rally in the area two weeks ago.

Warring South Sudanese rivals met for Chinese-mediated talks in Khartoum on Monday, agreeing to "immediately work to stop hostilities," Sudan's foreign minister said.

The rivals also agreed to "speed up the pace of negotiations to form a transitional government," Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Karti told reporters after the meeting.

The U.N.-African Union mission in Darfur said Tuesday that Sudan has asked it to close its human rights office in Khartoum, as tensions rise over investigations into an alleged mass rape.

The mission's attempts to investigate charges that government troops raped 200 women and girls in the Darfur village of Tabit last month have angered Khartoum.

Beneath one of the thorny trees dotting the village of Tabit, Darfur's prosecutor general sat interviewing women about a report Sudanese troops arrived last month and carried out a mass rape.

Dressed in his suit despite the 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) heat, Yasir Ahmed Mohamed took notes at a table as a woman wearing a brightly colored robe talked to him. Nearby 10 others waited in line for their turn with the prosecutor.

Sudan said Thursday it is organizing a December 4 meeting of Libya's neighbors, as the North African country continues to be plagued by lawlessness and violence.

The foreign ministers of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Niger and Tunisia have been invited to the meeting in Khartoum, the foreign ministry said.

The presidents of Sudan and South Sudan agreed Tuesday to resume work to demarcate their contested border, a dispute that boiled over into armed conflict between the countries in 2012.

The south split from the north in 2011 under a peace agreement ending 22 years of civil war, and the two remain at odds over unresolved issues from the secession, including the frontier.