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| Africa Horn |
| New fighting in oil town raises tensions between North and South Sudan |
| 2008-12-15 |
| Several thousand civilians fled the Sudanese town of Abyei after renewed clashes in the disputed oil district where fighting this year raised fears of a return to civil war, officials said on Sunday. "The general population, because of the sensitivity of the area and because of the experience of what happened in May, don't want to hear [gunfire]. It scares them," said Abyei chief administrator Arop Moyak. The region of Abyei, with its considerable oil wealth, lies on the faultline between North and South Sudan with borders still unresolved more than three years after a peace agreement ended decades of civil war. "Those who left [are] not less than 3,000, but there is a sign that some of them are coming back," Moyak said. One person was killed and four to 10 others wounded when police and soldiers traded fire, less than two weeks after UN officials said that thousands of civilians were returning home after fighting flattened the town in May. Moyak broke off urgent talks in the South Sudanese capital Juba to return to Abyei on Saturday after the violence flared the previous day in a blow to hopes of a return to security after the devastating fighting of seven months ago. "The assessment is ongoing, but right now we're looking at 400 to 500 households on the road toward Agok [from Abyei]," one aid worker told AFP. "Most of the shops are closed and many of the traders are packing up. We don't have a sense of numbers, but the problem is the center of town. On the periphery there are people who are still staying," the aid worker added. The precise cause of the renewed clashes is murky, but some officials pointed to an argument between a market trader and a soldier. In a dangerous development for stability in the disputed district, the clashes involved police and soldiers from joint units of former foes from North and South, whose deployment was supposed to restore security to the town. |
| Posted by:Fred |