Hundreds of people may have been killed in the heaviest fighting between northern Sudanese forces and their former southern rebel foes since they signed a peace deal last year, a top southern officer said on Thursday. In Nigeria's capital Abuja, the African Union decided to extend for six months the mandate of its peacekeeping force in Sudan's western Darfur region, where a separate conflict has killed an estimated 200,000 people since early 2003.In the southern town of Malakal, terrified civilians reported looting and dead bodies in the streets after three days of clashes, and U.N. officials in New York said 240 civilian personnel had been temporarily evacuated from the town. "More than hundreds have been lost. The Sudan army sustained very heavy casualties and civilians were caught in the crossfire," Elias Waya Nyipuocs, a senior officer in the former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, told Reuters.
Nyipuocs said militias belonging to the northern Sudanese Armed Forces attacked the SPLA and the local commissioner of Malakal. The militiamen then took refuge in the SAF barracks near the airport and full combat began. "We were forced to overrun the barracks and the SAF fought side by side with the militia against the SPLA," he said. SAF tanks then counter-attacked and also shelled the town, inflicting many civilian casualties, Nyipuocs said.