South Sudan SSDF, SPLA clash, killing seven

Feb 6, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Some seven people were killed in southern Sudan in clashes between renegade armed militias and the south Sudan army, despite a 2005 peace deal to end Africa’s longest civil war there, officials said on Monday.

The United Nations has been slow to deploy around 10,000 soldiers to monitor a ceasefire in the south between former foes the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the northern Islamist government.

“There have been clashes between elements of the SSDF and the SPLM,” said U.N. spokeswoman Radhia Achouri. The South Sudan Defence Forces (SSDF) are the largest southern militia who allied themselves to the north and fought against the SPLM during the bitter civil war.

Last month SSDF commander Paulino Matip signed a deal to incorporate their forces into the SPLM’s south Sudan army but since then a fellow commander, Gordon Kong, has voiced opposition to the move, sparking the recent clashes.

The southern deal created separate armies for the north and south and said all other armed groups should join either army within one year.

It also grants southerners a referendum on secession within six years of ending the war that claimed 2 million lives and drove 4 million from their homes.

Achouri could not confirm the exact number of dead in the fighting over the past few days but said the United Nations had helped to evacuate 14 injured from Jonglei. The clashes had now ended.

Matip told reporters on Monday at least seven were killed, but denied the clashes involved renegade elements of the SSDF, adding it was just tribal conflict over water and cattle.

Sudan’s southern civil war broadly pitted the Islamist Khartoum government against the mostly Christian, animist south, complicated by issues of oil, ethnicity and ideology.

The January 2005 deal does not cover a separate revolt in the western Darfur region or a simmering rebellion in the east.

The U.N. Children’s Agency (UNICEF) said on Monday it was rushing medicines to the southern Sudanese town of Yei following an outbreak of diarrhoea that had killed 12 people.

The outbreak was first reported on Saturday and has since spread rapidly to affect 600 people, half of whom are children. Diarrhoea is one of the biggest killers of children in Africa.

UNICEF says less than one-third of south Sudan’s population has access to clean water.

(Reuters)