Latest News
Southern troops, Arab tribesmen clash in Sudan
By [unknown placeholder $article.art_field1$]
Apr 29, 2008 - 9:23:12 PM

Southern troops, Arab tribesmen clash in Sudan

By MOHAMED OSMAN – 6 hours ago

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — South Sudanese troops and Arab tribesmen clashed for four days in an oil-rich region in central Sudan, killing dozens of people before peace was restored on Tuesday, a government official said.

The fighting broke out in the Kailak-Kharasana area in southern Kordofan province. Claimed by both north and south, the area has become a potential flashpoint that could wreck the fragile peace between the ethnic African south and Sudan's Arab-dominated government in the capital Khartoum.

The north and south fought a 21-year civil war that ended with a peace agreement in 2005 that resulted in an autonomous government in the south.

The latest fighting erupted after local Misseriah Arab tribesmen attacked a garrison of southern forces whom they maintain should not be in the disputed region.

The state minister for humanitarian affairs, Ahmed Mohammed Haroun, told the official Sudanese News Agency, SUNA, that calm had returned to the area after a six-man committee, including northern and southern officials, brokered an agreement.

"These clashes have left a number of dead and injured on both sides," he told SUNA.

Earlier reports had put the death toll near 100, but Gur called that an exaggeration.

Mohammed Salman Gur, the representative of the affected region, said that fighters from the Southern People's Liberation Army (SPLA) had begun withdrawing from the Kailak-Kharasana area.

Gur, a Misseriah but affiliated with the southerners, told The Associated Press that at least 28 tribesmen were killed along with an unspecified number of southerners.

The region lies just north of the boundary line between north and south Sudan set by British colonial rulers in the early 20th century. But the line is disputed, and southerners want the area incorporated into their autonomous zone, created by the 2005 peace agreement.

There are fears that a return to war in the tense area could plunge all of Sudan into chaos and exacerbate the separate conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.

It was not clear whether the fighting was connected to a census that was begun last week. The census, required under the 2005 peace deal, will be crucial in conducting future elections and in determining how political power, oil and other natural wealth are shared in Sudan.

Many of the south's former rebel leaders come from nearby oil-rich region Abyei and frequently vow to reclaim the area. But the government in Khartoum is unwilling to let go of the area's lucrative oil fields.