United Nations monitors this week accused Ugandan officers in the African Union peacekeeping force -- which also groups Ethiopian and Somali commanders -- of selling arms to Islamist rebels in violation of a 1992 arms embargo.

"That cannot be true. We cannot give arms to people who shoot at us," Ugandan army spokesman Captain Paddy Ankunda told AFP.

"It is absolutely ridiculous, I think these are spoilers who are trying to spoil the Africa(n) Union machine, but we hope the UN will investigate this report and bring out the truth," he added.

The Ethiopian foreign ministry flatly denied the aaccusations and instead said its troops, deployed late 2006 to bolster the feeble Somali government, had helped curb arms theft.

"The claims that Ethiopian troops are supplying Shabab (Islamist insurgents) have no plausibility," the ministry said in a statement released in Addis Ababa.

"Ethiopian troops have in fact played a major role in preventing the theft of arms and ammunition in recent months.

"It is entirely fanciful to suggest Ethiopia is funneling arms and ammunition to Shabab, or indeed that Shabab would accept arms from such a tainted source. Nor is the evidence offered by the report hardly convincing."

But Addis Ababa said it would probe claims that have dogged the Horn of Africa nation since 2005.

Somali government officials were not reachable to comment on the report.

The report was sent to the UN Security Council on Thursday by a panel charged with reviewing the 1992 arms embargo slapped on Somalia after it descended into anarchy following the ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre.

Experts said in the report that arms on sale originate from army stocks or are seized following battles with Islamist insurgents.

Since Barre's ouster, several well-armed clan-based factions have been in an almost constant state of low-level war, hindering effective monitoring of the embargo.

The UN Security Council has rejected several pleas by transitional Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed to ease the arms ban, warning that such a move would exacerbate fighting in the lawless nation.

The world body's monitors accused neighbouring Ethiopia, Yemen and Eritrea of violating the embargo by repeatedly sending weapons shipments to increasingly hostile factions within Somalia.

Somalia's breakaway northern regions of Puntland and Somaliland are other entry points for weapons.

Meanwhile, new fighting erupted in Mogadishu after rebels attacked a new deployment of Ethiopian forces in Tawfiq district, one of the most volatile zones in the seaside capital.

"The fighting was very heavy, but brief. One civilian was killed and another one wounded," said local Abdi Mohamed Harre. Several witnesses confirmed the toll.

The AU peacekeeping mission can count on just over 2,500 Ugandan and Burundian troops in Somalia, but the deployment falls short of the 8,000 pledged by the pan-African body, and has to date proved unable to curb the violence.

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