`Mutiny` by south Sudan ex-militiamen kills 20

JUBA (Sudan), Feb 5: A rebellion by former pro-Khartoum militiamen in south Sudan against giving up their heavy weapons sparked two days of clashes which killed 20 people in oil-producing Upper Nile state, a military spokesman said on Saturday. Fighting in Malakal, the state capital, close to the border with the north, killed 20 people and wounded at least 24, said Philip Aguer, spokesman for the former rebel Sudan People`s Liberation Army (SPLA). "There was heavy fighting with mortars fired by both sides, but the clashes have now been brought under control," Mr Aguer said. "Our forces in the SPLA, along with the United Nations peacekeepers, have succeeded in creating a buffer zone between the two sides and to bring the situation to an end." Upper Nile`s Information Minister Peter Lam Both said fighting had also erupted in three other areas of the sensitive state on Saturday morning — Paloich, Malut and Maban. "The fighting started this morning but is now over… We don`t have any casualty figures but we`re fearing the numbers are heavy," Mr Lam said. The fighting around Malakal airport was sparked on Thursday when loyalists of Gabriel Tang, who commanded a pro-Khartoum militia during the 1983-2005 civil war between north and south, objected to surrendering their heavy weaponry. The former militiamen are deployed alongside regular northern troops in so-called Joint Integrated Units (JIUs) with southern forces that patrol the town under the peace agreement that ended the civil war. In reality the units are far from integrated and the component elements effectively operate as separate forces. The northern troops are shifting their equipment back home as the south gears up for its expected international recognition as an independent state in July following its overwhelming vote for secession in last month`s landmark referendum. But the ex-militiamen, whose roots are in the south, want to keep hold of their units` weaponry and they have put up a ferocious resistance to its redeployment. Saturday`s fighting outside Malakal broke out for the same reasons as the earlier mutiny, Mr Lam said, adding that the militiamen there were not necessarily Tang supporters.—AFP