Fighting resumed on Tuesday in Abyei, the flashpoint oil-rich border area between north and south Sudan whose status remains contested three years after the end of civil war, aid workers said.
”It began early this morning and now it seems like the fighting has stopped,” Kouider Zerrouk, the deputy spokesperson for the United Nations mission in Sudan, said by telephone.
Southern ex-rebels in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), who fought a two-decade civil war until reaching a power-sharing deal with Khartoum and a promised referendum on self-determination, are believed to have attacked.
”Fighting started this morning [Tuesday] at 4am [local time]. The SPLA attacked. There’s a lull at the moment, but I don’t think anybody thinks it’s over,” one aid worker said on condition of anonymity.
The violence erupted one day after UN agencies and aid workers began distributing food to some of the 30 000 to 50 000 people displaced by deadly fighting last week that levelled the marketplace in Abyei.
The UN had warned on Monday that continued insecurity posed challenges to humanitarian relief efforts in the west of the impoverished town.
The world body last week evacuated its entire civilian staff from the town following days of fighting between government forces and the SPLA.
Almost the entire population of the impoverished settlement in the heart of an oil-rich district claimed by both north and south are believed to have fled the fighting.
Aid workers and south Sudan politicians have said that bodies lay in the streets and that looting reportedly took place in the ramshackle town.
Impasse over the area — whose oil wealth is bitterly contested by the two sides — is one of the stumbling blocks delaying implementation of the 2005 peace deal and exacerbating tensions between north and south. — Sapa-AFP