Twenty-five people have been killed and several more wounded in clashes in the tense oil-rich Upper Nile region of south Sudan, a military spokesman said on Saturday.
Heavily armed fighters attacked an ethnic Dinka settlement in Bony-Thiang, north of the state capital Malakal, early on Friday, Major General Kuol Diem Kuol, of the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), said.
Angry Dinka groups then launched a retaliatory raid on the nearby Shilluk village of Bon, killing five people including a woman and two children, Kuol said.
A southern army spokesman accused Sudan’s former foreign minister Lam Akol, now the leader of a breakaway political party, of arming the attackers from his Shilluk tribe.
Rival tribes from Sudan’s underdeveloped south have clashed for years in disputes often caused by cattle rustling and long-running feuds, but violence has soared this year.
Elections in 2010
The United Nations said the attacks could mar preparations for Sudan’s first multi-party elections in 20 years, scheduled for April 2010. They could also affect the security of oil installations across the region.
Akol formed a new party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement for Democratic Change (SPLM-DC) in June, splitting from the main southern party, the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).
Kuol said the gunmen belonged to a militia backed by a splinter group SPLM-DC.
Akol dismissed accusations of his involvement. "This is absolute nonsense," he told Reuters. "Their intention is to smear the good name of myself and the SPLM-DC."
Many in the south distrust Akol, who changed sides during Sudan’s 22-year civil war between the southern rebels and the government in Khartoum.
North-south tensions remain high, with Sudan still divided by the religious, ethnic and ideological differences which sparked the conflict.
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.
Under the deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war, the south has a six-year transitional period of regional autonomy and takes part in a unity government until a 2011 referendum on self-determination.