ALL-OUT war between Sudan and South Sudan has edged closer as warplanes bombed a large town in the South, destroying a street market, killing a boy and injuring 10 people.
Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, further ratcheted up the tension yesterday by suggesting the time for talking was over, leaving only “the language of the gun and ammunition”.
Weeks of fighting have brought the neighbours to the brink less than a year after South Sudan’s independence. The European Union joined the United States and African Union in urging restraint. But such pleas seemed hopeless as Sudanese MiG 29 jets bombed an area near Bentiu in South Sudan, according to officials and witnesses. One rocket just missed a bridge which links Bentiu with the disputed border and Heglig oilfields to the north. Another landed in the nearby Rubkona market, a heavily populated area.
Several shops were destroyed and one man was mutilated almost beyond recognition. The burned body of the boy lay flat on his back near the centre of the blast site, a hand clutching at the sky.
A hospital official in Bentiu told the Associated Press that 10 people were wounded. Reuters quoted officials and witnesses saying that three people had died.
South Sudanese soldiers and civilians returned volleys of futile small arms fire. “The bombing amounts to a declaration of war,” said Maj Gen Mac Paul, deputy director of military intelligence for South Sudan.
Sudan denied any involvement. Military spokesman Al-Sawarmi Khalid told Reuters: “We have no relation to what happened in Unity state. And we absolutely did not bomb anywhere in South Sudan.”
Meanwhile, Mr Bashir arrived in Heglig, the oil-rich border town whose recent occupation by South Sudanese troops sparked the latest crisis. “We will not negotiate with the South’s government, because they don’t understand anything but the language of the gun and ammunition,” he told Sudanese troops at a barracks.
Gen Kamal Abdul Maarouf, a Sudanese commander who led the battles in Heglig, told Reuters that his army had killed 1,200 South Sudanese troops in fighting in the area – an account that South Sudan denied.
The countries are clashing over the demarcation of their border and the sharing of oil revenues.
Immediate tensions appeared to have eased on Friday when South Sudan said it was withdrawing its troops from Heglig. But on Saturday, a Muslim mob burned a Catholic church in Sudan frequented mostly by South Sudanese. And on Sunday the two countries clashed near Teshwin, to the south of Heglig. – (Guardian service)