Africa

Sudan and South move closer to war

April 24, 2012   ·   2752923 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fsomalilandpress.com%2Fsudan-and-south-move-closer-to-war-27529Sudan+and+South+move+closer+to+war2012-04-25+02%3A55%3A58Qalinle+Husseinhttp%3A%2F%2Fsomalilandpress.com%2F%3Fp%3D27529

BENTIU — All-out war between Sudan and South Sudan is closer after planes bombed a large town in the South, destroying a street market, killing a boy and injuring 10 people.

The President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, raised tensions by suggesting the time for talking was over, leaving only ”the language of the gun and ammunition”.

Weeks of fighting have brought the neighbours to the brink less than a year after South Sudan gained independence. On Monday the European Union joined the US and African Union in urging restraint.

Such pleas seemed increasingly hopeless, as officials and witnesses reported Sudanese MiG 29 jets bombing an area near Bentiu in South Sudan.

One rocket just missed a main bridge, which links Bentiu with the disputed border and Heglig oilfields to the north. Another landed in the nearby Rubkona market, a heavily populated area.

The burned body of the boy lay face-up, near the centre of the blast site. A hospital official in Bentiu told the Associated Press that 10 people had been wounded. Reuters quoted officials and witnesses saying three people had died.

South Sudanese soldiers and civilians returned volleys of futile small arms fire. The South Sudanese President, Salva Kiir, who was in Beijing yesterday meeting his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, said Khartoum had ”declared war” on his newly independent nation.

Sudan denied involvement.

Its military spokesman, Al-Sawarmi Khalid, told Reuters: ”We have no relation to what happened in Unity state, and we absolutely did not bomb anywhere in South Sudan.”

Meanwhile, Mr Bashir arrived in Heglig, the oil-rich border town whose recent occupation by South Sudanese troops sparked the latest crisis. ”We will not negotiate with the South’s government because they don’t understand anything but the language of the gun and ammunition,” he told Sudanese troops at a barracks.

General Kamal Abdul Maarouf, a Sudanese commander who led the battles in Heglig, told Reuters that his army had killed 1200 South Sudanese troops in fighting in the area – an account South Sudan denied.

The countries are clashing over the demarcation of their border and the sharing of oil revenue, halting nearly all oil production that underpins both economies.

The fighting has apparently stiffened the resolve of the South Sudanese. ”We are now being forced into war,” Stephen Bading, a civil servant, said. ”We are not intending to fight – our President has a saying that he would not take his people to war – but if the enemy [makes] a series of attacks … definitely we have to defend ourselves.”

Guardian News & Media

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By Qalinle Hussein

Tags: Heglig, Oil, South Sudan, Sudan, War