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North-south Sudan clashes kill 58, injure 85

26 April 2010 08:10 (UTC +04:00)

Sudanâ€™s oil-producing south was allowed to keep a separate army and form a semi-autonomous government in a 2005 peace deal ending more than two decades of civil war with the north. Southerners will also vote in a key referendum on January 9, 2011 on independence.
â€œThere was movement from the Rizeigat (tribe) and from the SPLA (the southern Sudan Peopleâ€™s Liberation Army). I canâ€™t tell you who attacked who first but they clashed,â€ Rizeigat Arab tribal leader Mohamed Eissa Aliu told Reuters from South Darfur.
â€œIt happened on Friday and those killed from the Rizeigat were 58 and 85 injured,â€ he said, adding the attack was in Balballa, South Darfur, which borders Western Bahr al-Ghazal in the south.The SPLA said they were attacked by the northern army (SAF) in Raja, a remote part of Western Bahr al-Ghazal state, near where at least 5 officials from the dominant northern National Congress Party (NCP) and four others were killed by an SPLA soldier in murky circumstances during five-days of voting which began on April 11.
The north-south civil war, Africaâ€™s longest, has raged on and off since 1955. It claimed 2 million lives mostly through hunger and disease and destabilized much of east Africa.The south, which follows mostly Christianity or traditional religions, fought the mainly Muslim north over issues including oil, ethnicity and ideology.