More than 150 people died in violence between government forces and rebel militias in Southern Sudan last week, an official said on Sunday, raising concerns about the stability of the south ahead of the region’s declaration of independence in July.
Head of Southern Sudan’s Army Information Department Brigadier Malaak Ayuen said fighting on Saturday between a group of rebels led by Major General Gabriel Tanginye in Jonglei State and southern government forces, led to 57 people being killed and scores being injured.
Ayuen said that five days of fighting between government forces and those loyal to another rebel chief, Peter Gatdet, in Unity State, which is northwest of Jonglei, led to the deaths of 48 people. He did not give a breakdown of the number of civilians, rebels and soldiers killed in both incidents.
Since its independence referendum in January, Southern Sudan has seen a wave of violence that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds.
The south voted nearly unanimously to secede from the north, but many issues remain to be resolved, including the sharing of oil revenues, the status of southerner and northerner minorities living on both sides of the border, and who controls the disputed border region of Abyei, a fertile area near large oil fields.
Southern officials now claim the militia groups they are fighting are being funded by the north to cause instability, with the goal of taking over oil fields in the south.
Before this week’s violence the UN said that at least 800 people had been killed and 94,000 displaced as a result of violence in Southern Sudan this year.
The fresh clashes between Tanginye’s forces and the army erupted on Saturday morning in Kaldak village north of Jonglei State, where his forces had been assembled for reintegration into the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, poised to become Southern Sudan’s regular force in July.
Tanginye said his base was attacked by the southern army because he refused to disarm his men ahead of the reintegration process, an allegation the army dismissed as “a lie.”
Tanginye was a Khartoum-sponsored warlord who burned and looted southern villages along the Nile River during the decades-long north-south civil war. He continued to work for the north after a 2005 peace deal ended the war. Although he accepted an amnesty and reintegration package with the southern army late last year, it is now unclear which side Tanginye is fighting for.
The fighting in Unity State erupted on Tuesday last week and continued until Saturday, with both the army and the rebels claiming control of Mankien village in Mayom County, where the fighting was concentrated.
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