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Troops Continue Clash In South Sudan, African States Mediate
South Sudan's President Salva Kiir gestures during a news conference in Juba December 18, 2013. Kiir said on Wednesday he was ready for dialogue with his rival who he has accused of trying to force him out of power through fighting. PHOTO BY REUTERS
By Carl Odera and Andrew Green
19/12/2013
JUBA (Reuters) - South Sudanese government troops battled to regain control of a flashpoint town and sent forces to quell fighting in a vital oil producing area on Thursday, the fifth day of a conflict that that has deepended ethnic divisions in the two-year-old nation.
The conflict, which has so far killed up to 500 people, has alarmed South Sudan's neighbours. African mediators held talks with President Salva Kiir on Thursday to try to broker peace.
The fighting that erupted around the capital on Sunday night has quickly spread, pitting loyalists of the former Vice President Riek Machar, a Nuer, against Kiir, a member of the dominant Dinka clan.
Machar, whose dismissal in July led to months of tensions, has denied Kiir's accusation that he had led a coup attempt.
Thousands of people have sought refuge on U.N. bases, including 200 oil employees in a main crude-producing region, after clashes between workers on two fields killed at least 16 people. Officials said oil production had not been disrupted.
The fighting adds new instability to an already volatile region of Africa, derailing the young and undeveloped nation's halting efforts to build a functioning state.
A team of mediators sent by the Addis Ababa-based African Union arrived in Juba for talks. An Ethiopian official said representatives were from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, the first major peace initiative since clashes first erupted.
"The African Union is till now meeting with the president," spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny said, without giving details of the team. "Their message is that they are trying to broker peace between the two forces."
As fighting has spread, rivals have fought fierce gunbattles over the town of Bor, north of Juba, the scene of a 1991 massacre by soldiers loyal to Machar of hundreds of Dinkas.
"Bor has surrendered actually because the forces that were in Bor were mainly loyal to Machar," Ateny said. "They control the town but government forces are trying to retake the town."
OIL FIELD CLASHES
Jodi Jonglei Boyoris, a senior official in Juba, said his family were trapped in Bor and were trying to reach a U.N. camp for safety.
"There is no fighting at all because those soldiers who were in Bor town evacuated as of this morning," he said.
The United Nations has said that alongside 400 to 500 dead, about 20,000 people have taken shelter on bases of U.N. peacekeepers in the nation of 11 milllion people the size of France. But the United Nations has also said its 7,000 to 8,000 peacekeepers will not intervene in the conflict.
A U.N. spokesman said the 200 or so oil workers who fled to a U.N. base in the Bentiu oil producing area were expected to be evacuated by their company, which he did not name.
Mabek Lang De Mading, deputy of governor of Unity State, one of the main oil producing areas, said forces were sent to Unity field, where five people were killed after workers fought with spears and sticks, and to Thar Jath field, where 11 were killed.
"It is stable now," he told Reuters.
China National Petroleum Corp, India's ONGC Videsh and Malaysia's Petronas are the main firms running the oilfields. Total has exploration acreage in country. South Sudan has the third largest reserves in Sub-Saharan Africa after Angola and Nigeria, according to BP.
Oil production, which had been about 245,000 barrels per day, supplies the government with most of its revenues.
As tension in South Sudan mounted following the sacking of Machar, the former vice president accused Kiir was acting like a dictator. The president said his rivals were reviving the splits of 1991 that led to bloodshed.
A persistent dispute with Sudan over their border, oil and security have added to the sense of crisis. The row led to shutting oil production for about 15 months until earlier this year, slashing back state revenues and undermining efforts to improve public service in a nation with barely any tarmac roads.
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