Saturday's explosion outside the western city of Dire Dawa also badly damaged the locomotive of the express train from Djibouti to the capital, Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian New Agency said.

No one claimed responsibility and none of the passengers on the train, which normally carries over 200 people and several cars of cargo, was hurt, the report said.

The explosion was the second along the railway line this year. In August, explosives planted along the same area of the tracks injured a driver and assistant driver on the express train heading toward Djibouti.

The culprits in that attack were never identified.

It said the people killed at Bokila locality in north-eastern Ethiopia belonged to the Afar ethnic group.

Ethiopia and Eritrea are currently engaged in a border dispute which broke out in May 1998. The two countries' armies have fought several bloody battles with high casualties on both sides.

The Herald quoted authorities in the Afar regional state, bordering Eritrea, as saying that in addition to the killings, Eritrean troops also engaged in cattle rustling and other acts of robbery.

The officials said that those killed included religious leaders, tribal chiefs, elderly people and youths, allegedly for refusing "to accept identity cards as Eritrean citizens."

Three days after the first incident 1 November in which two people were killed, the members of the Afar community fleeing the area were stopped by Eritrean soldiers who selected 15 out of them and executed them.

The soldiers allegedly also took away 30 heads of cattle and robbed personal belongings of the others. The newspaper, which published the names of those killed, also quoted the state authorities as saying the attacks were "in retaliation for their refusal to take up Eritrean citizenship."

The latest incidents raised the number of Ethiopian Afars killed by Eritrean forces to 31 in recent months, the paper claimed.

Ambassador Danilo Turk of Slovenia, Council President for November, said in a press statement that the members called on the international community to respond generously to the consolidated inter-agency appeals for both countries.

At the New York Coffee Sugar and Cocoa Exchange, coffee futures were sharply higher in another rally sparked by the weather conditions in Brazil and a steep decline in production in the world's second largest producer Colombia.

The two factors combined with limited selling by producers to lift arabica coffee futures to a five-month high at the opening bell. The unexpectedly strong start in New York helped spike up robusta coffee futures in London.

``There was excitement in New York over Brazil weather and the reports of Colombia's crop which fuelled everything. London got dragged with it,'' said a trader in London.

Brazilian meteorologist Somar said on Friday the country's top three coffee producing states were to see virtually no rainfall over the next five to seven days.

The crop entered its flowering period starved of soil moisture, and with a number of trees stressed or defoliated after an extended winter drought and a cold snap in August.

In Colombia, the National Coffee Growers' Federation said the country produced 741,000 60-kg bags of coffee in October, compared to 1.51 million bags in the same period a year ago.

It gave no reason for the 50.9 percent decline, but the fall comes against the backdrop of prolonged and unusually heavy rains across much of Colombia.

Authorities have blamed the La Nina weather pattern, a phenomenon that causes the cooling of ocean currents in the Pacific, for downpours battering the coffee region this year.

The federation said coffee production in the first 10 months of 1999 totalled 7.34 million bags, down 26.7 percent from 10.02 million bags in the same 1998 period.

December delivery arabica coffee rose 5.95 cents to 122.50 cents per pound.