Clashes Sudan census, 120 dead

JUBA, Sudan: More than 120 people have been killed in two outbreaks of fighting this week since Sudan launched a census that is crucial to the distribution of power and wealth between north and south, officials said yesterday.

Clashes between armed northerners and south Sudan’s army killed 29 people in an upsurge of violence close to the country’s volatile north-south border on Thursday, southern army Maj Gen James Hoth said.

Separately, a southern official said 95 people had been killed and 42 wounded on Tuesday in an inter-clan cattle raiding attack in a sparsely populated area north of Juba, capital of southern Sudan.

In Thursday’s incident, Hoth said two members of the northern Misseriya tribe were killed in a morning battle and 27 tribesmen died in a second attack on the southern army’s position near the vital Heglig oil fields. He said no southern soldiers were killed.

“We sustained six wounded with none dead,” he added. Hoth said that before fighting began, Misseriya representatives had asked the southern forces to move out of the area, which they consider part of northern Sudan.

South Sudan gained semi-autonomous status under a 2005 peace deal that ended over two decades of civil war and paved the way for a democratic transformation including elections next year and a referendum on southern independence due in 2011.

But progress has been slow, and the two sides have so far failed to agree on a demarcation of the north-south border.

A series of similar clashes between armed Misseriya groups and the southern army further west along the north-south border killed dozens earlier this year, clouding north-south relations.

The timing of the new attack is especially sensitive because of the first census since 1993, which is seen as a key step towards next year’s elections. Misseriya representatives could not be reached for comment.

Amid the mayhem of Tuesday’s cattle-raid fighting, census materials were burned, Lakes State Information Minister Agad Chol said, adding that replacements had been ordered and southern soldiers had been sent to the area to restore calm.

A journalist from the UN radio station Miriya FM reported having seen “tens of bodies on the ground” when he visited the area on Thursday.

The 2005 peace deal ended one of Africa’s longest civil wars, in which some 2mn people were killed.

But it left weapons in the hands of rival communities in the severely under-developed south. Disarmament efforts by the southern government have been patchy and contentious, with communities arguing that they are left vulnerable to their still-armed neighbours. - Reuters