20110305
reuters

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Militias burned down a village in Sudan's contested Abyei region on Saturday, a southern official said.

The incident occurred the day after northern and southern leaders met to end fighting that according to one report has killed more than 100 people.

"The militias went to Tajalei. They burned all the tukuls (huts) that they found there," Charles Abyei, speaker of the area's administration from the Dinka Ngok, told Reuters.

"It shows...the intention of the government of trying to occupy the whole area. That is why they are displacing the population from all directions. The villagers in northern part of Abyei are displaced," he said.

The inhabitants of Tajalei village had fled after hearing rumours of an attack, and no one was injured, Abyei said.

The United Nations Security Council has expressed its "deep concern" about this week's surge of violence in the central, fertile Abyei region, claimed by both north and south Sudan.

Ownership of the territory remains one of the biggest bones of contention between the two halves of the country in the build up to the secession of the oil-producing south, expected to take place on July 9.

Southerners, who mostly follow Christianity and traditional beliefs, voted overwhelmingly to declare independence in a January referendum promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war with the Muslim north.

Abyei's status was left undecided in the accord, stoking tensions between northern Arab Misseriya nomads and south-linked Dinka Ngok people who both use the area.