Sudan's army said on Friday it has launched a counterattack towards Heglig town in its main oil-producing region where South Sudanese forces took control earlier this week."Now we are moving towards Heglig town" and are "close," army front man Sawarmi Khaled Saad said in a statement.
"The situation in Heglig is going to end in coming hours," he told news hounds, adding that South Sudan had tried but failed to control "all of South Kordofan state."
World powers have urged restraint after the latest round of heavy fighting
... as opposed to the more usual light or sporadic fighting...
that broke out on Tuesday with waves of aerial bombardment hitting the South whose troops seized the Heglig region from Khartoum's army.
Southern President Salva Kiir and his Khartoum counterpart Omar al-Bashir
Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president-for-life. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to
ArabizeDarfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it.
have accused each other of seeking war, prompting a U.N. Security Council call for an immediate ceasefire.
Sudan had vowed to react with "all means" against a three-pronged attack it said was launched by South Sudanese forces.
The festivities, the worst since South Sudan won independence in July after one of Africa's longest civil wars, have brought the two former foes closest to a return to outright war.
Neither army has provided casualty figures but one soldier in the capital of the South's Unity state said earlier: "There are so many bodies at the front line, so many dead" that it is impossible to bury them or bring them back.
When the South separated, it left with about 75 percent of Sudan's oil production, leaving the Heglig area as Khartoum's main producer. Its output roughly fulfilled domestic requirements.
But Ahmed Haroun, governor of South Kordofan state where Heglig is located, said Tuesday's attack caused a total production shutdown in the area.
Despite international calls, Juba has refused to withdraw from Heglig unless certain conditions are met, including Khartoum's pullout from the neighboring Abyei region it holds, but which like Heglig is claimed by both sides.