05 Sep 2009
Clashes between gunmen and Sudanese forces have left at least 25 people dead and several more wounded in south Sudan, amid intensifying tension.

In the first incident, heavily armed fighters ambushed an ethnic Dinka settlement in Bony-Thiang, in Wilaya, early on Friday, according to a military spokesman.

The victims of the attack in oil-rich Upper Nile region of south Sudan included the chief of a local tribe and his family, Major General Kuol Diem Kuol of the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) added.

The attack prompted a retaliatory raid by Dinka groups on the nearby Shilluk village of Bon, killing five people including a woman and two children.

Kuol accused a splinter group from the south's ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), known as SPLM Democratic Change (SPLM-DC) for backing the militia behind the Friday's attack.

Officials from the SPLM-DC denied the charges, threatening legal action against further "fabrications", aimed at linking the group to any militia.

Tribal disputes over cattle, land or water access, often turn deadly in southern Sudan, a region marred by more than two decades of civil war until the 2005 pact ended Africa's longest-running strife.

More than 2,000 people have died and 250,000 been displaced in inter-tribal violence across southern Sudan since January, according to the United Nations, which says the rate of violent deaths now surpasses that in the war-torn western region of Darfur.

Some southern officials have accused the political rivals in the north of fomenting and supporting tribal violence to hamper national elections, which under a 2005 peace past are likely to take place in 2010.

The officials say the north is using the unrest as an excuse to represent efforts by the semi-autonomous government in the south as inadequate in protecting civilians, as United Nations said the recent rise in tribal fighting could further delay the poll.

presstv