Northern troops seized control of most of Abyei district on Sudan’s north-south border on Sunday, Khartoum said as the south accused it of an “illegal invasion” that threatens the lives of thousands.
The seizure, coming in the run-up to international recognition of the south’s independence in July, was condemned by the world powers as a threat to peace between Sudan’s north and south.
Abyei was granted a special status under the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended 22 years of devastating civil war between north and south and requires both sides to keep their troops out until a vote to determine its future.
“We are in control of Abyei and all the [Bahr al-Arab] area north of the bank of the river,” Khartoum’s minister of state for the presidency, Amin Hassan Omer, told a news conference in Khartoum.
“This is because there is still elements from SPLA [the south’s Sudan People’s Liberation Army] trying to enforce its presence in Abyei, and this is not acceptable according to Abyei protocol and the CPA.”
South Sudan’s government warned the north’s “illegal occupation” of Abyei risked tipping the country back to a conflict that would threaten the lives of thousands of civilians.
“This is an illegal invasion and breaks all the peace agreements, endangering the lives of thousands of civilians,” said south Sudan’s information minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin.
“They [the north] are in a fighting mood but we can not accept that they drag the people of Sudan down the drain.”
Both sides said they were committed to the CPA.
Omer said “the next step is that we are ready for engagement and negotiations to stop the problem”.
“We are a responsible government, we’ll not leave any part of Sudan in a security vacuum,” he said.
The south’s Benjamin said: “We are committed to the full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.”
SPLA spokesperson Philip Aguer said earlier that “the fighting has been very, very bad” and that “indiscriminate” bombing forced people to flee.
“People have fled the area, because the bombardment was indiscriminate — bombs from the air and from tanks on the ground,” he added.
Troops loyal to the SPLA had all retreated into the south from the disputed district on the border with the north, he added.
Britain on Sunday joined the growing chorus of international condemnation of the north’s move into the contested district.
“I condemn recent military actions in and around Abyei, including the attack on Abyei town by the Sudanese armed forces on 21 May and the attack on a joint Sudanese armed forces and UN convoy on 19 May,” said Foreign Secretary William Hague in a statement.
The United Nations had called on Saturday for an “immediate cessation of hostilities”, after the United States and France called on Khartoum to withdraw its forces.
A UN base in Abyei came under attack, with a mortar round landing inside the compound, but there were no casualties, a UN spokesperson said.
Aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières, which runs health clinics in Abyei town and 40km to the south in Agok, said in a statement the “entire population of Abyei town fled the city”.
Its clinic in Agok had received 42 wounded people by Saturday evening.
Fighting in Abyei has pitted the former civil war enemies against each other since January when the district was due to vote on its future alongside a referendum on independence for the south which delivered a landslide for secession.
But the plebiscite was postponed indefinitely as the north and south disagreed on who should be eligible to vote in an area where conflicted loyalties and land disputes keep tensions high.
A UN Security Council delegation met on Sunday with representatives of the Sudanese government in Khartoum but neither Foreign Minister Ali Karti, who was expected to lead discussions, nor Vice-President Ali Osman Taha were present.
“The issue of Abyei was of course at the heart of discussions and the Sudanese party expressed its will to cooperate” with the international community, a participant told AFP on condition of anonymity.
State news agency Suna, meanwhile, said Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir ordered mixed local administrative units be replaced, a move violating the 2005 peace treaty.
The district’s future is the most sensitive of a raft of issues the two sides had been struggling to reach agreement on before July. – AFP