JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Soldiers from Sudan and South Sudan clashed
at a river dividing their two countries, leaving 22 dead as fighting
spread to a new area of the tense border. A Sudanese official demanded
on Wednesday that South Sudan withdraw from an oil-rich area it occupied
last week or face a concerted attack.
Tuesday's firefight began
after a Sudanese soldier shot a South Sudan soldier who was getting
water from the river, South Sudan government spokesman Barnaba Marial
Benjamin said Wednesday. In all, seven South Sudan soldiers and 15 Sudan
soldiers died near the town of Meiram, along the border with Sudan's
South Kordofan state and South Sudan's Northern Bahr el Ghazal state, he
said.
Even as border violence was spreading to new regions,
Benjamin labeled the fight as a "misunderstanding" and said he did not
think violence would continue there.
The river battle comes amid
wider violence along the shared border around the oil town of Heglig,
which South Sudan troops took control of last week. Sudanese aircraft
have been bombing South Sudan's Unity State as a part of that fighting.
Benjamin
said there was no new fighting around Heglig on Wednesday. But a Sudan
official, Mustafa Osman Ismail, warned South Sudan that it must
immediately withdraw from Heglig or face counterattacks. Ismail, a
senior adviser to Sudan President Omar al-Bashir, spoke in Ethiopia's
capital, where he met with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and African Union
officials.
He said the trip was intended to "ask those with influence" to persuade South Sudan to withdraw from Heglig.
Sudan
President Omar al-Bashir called several heads of states and sent his
foreign minister to South Africa to work on the issue, Ismail said.
"Time is running short, and our army is also getting ready," said Ismail.
He
said Khartoum is under pressure from Sudan's public to liberate "the
invaded territory" after South Sudan TV broadcast images of what he said
are medical staff captured in Heglig.
South Sudan broke away from
Sudan in July after decades of civil war, creating the world's newest
country. But the two never agreed on how to share the oil wealth found
in the region between the countries, and the border was never fully
demarcated.
Fighting has intensified in the last several weeks amid fears the two sides could return to an all-out war.
Associated Press writer Kirubel Tadesse in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق