Deadly fighting raged between rival Sudanese forces on Tuesday in Abyei, a flashpoint oil district between north and south whose status remains contested three years after the end of civil war.
Aid workers said fighting went on for at least five hours between government troops and southern ex-rebels, who fought Africa's longest civil war until reaching a fragile power-sharing peace agreement with Khartoum in 2005. The clashes, involving guns, mortar rounds and artillery, reached outside the gate of the main UN compound on the edge of town and severed a tentative ceasefire brokered by the United Nations late last week, aid workers said.
Impasse over Abyei - whose oil wealth is bitterly contested by Sudan's mainly Arab north and mainly Christian and animist south - has been one issue delaying implementation of the 2005 peace deal and without resolution could sink the agreement, analysts say.
Aid workers and Khartoum said the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) attacked the impoverished town of Abyei, which lies at the heart of the contested district and which had been under government military control. The Sudanese army spokesman said soldiers had died in the assault but that the 31st Brigade deployed in Abyei was repulsing the attack.
"It started at 4:00 am (0100 GMT) and stopped around 8:00 am. It started again just before 10:00 am and lasted about an hour. The fighting has been very heavy," said one aid worker on condition of anonymity. "It's currently quiet but I think the general feeling is that this is not the end," the aid worker added.
Fears are rising of a possible counter-attack on Agok, 25 kilometres (15 miles) to the south where UN agencies and aid workers are distributing food to some of the 30,000 to 50,000 people displaced by fighting in Abyei last week.
"The UN is currently using all means we can to get this resolved peacefully," Chris Johnson, head of the UN mission in Abyei, told AFP. Sudan's official SUNA news agency said SPLA forces attacked Abyei at dawn using heavy artillery in a bid to seize control of the town.
"The armed forces are repulsing the attack," SUNA quoted military spokesman Othman Mohammed al-Agbash as saying. "The armed forces have sustained a number of martyrs," he added. But Edward Lino, the chief southern politician based in Abyei, blamed the government military for sending additional troops into the town overnight.
"Once they arrived from the north, they immediately started this morning," he told AFP by telephone from the southern capital Juba. "The objective of the SPLA now was first of all to defend ourselves and the area, and to defend the people," he added.
Lino said he had reports of "many wounded and casualties" and that the fighting was "still going on". "This is the biggest violation that happened (since the 2005 peace agreement) but we are for peace and we cannot allow it to fall," he added.
The United Nations last week evacuated its entire civilian staff from the town following days of fighting between government forces and the SPLA. Aid workers said any casualties on Tuesday would be military because the entire civilian population - a mixture of Arab and Ngok Dinka tribesmen - had already fled the town.
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