JUBA, Sudan (Reuters) — Tribesmen killed 20 people, including a chief and his family, in an attack on a south Sudan village in the latest violence in the oil-producing territory, the southern Sudanese military said Saturday.
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. Mr. Akol dismissed the accusation.
The Shilluk tribesmen attacked the village of Bony-Thiang in Upper Nile State on Friday morning, killing civilians of the Dinka tribe, the army said.
Dinka fighters mounted a retaliatory attack on the nearby Shilluk village of Buol on Saturday morning, killing at least five people, said the army spokesman, Kuol Diem Kuol.
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.
The United Nations said the attacks could mar preparations for Sudan’s first multiparty elections in 20 years, scheduled for April 2010. They could also affect the security of oil installations.
Southern politicians accuse north Sudan’s dominant party, the National Congress Party, of trying to destabilize the south by provoking and arming rival tribes.
Sudan’s mostly Christian south fought the Muslim north in a two-decade civil war that ended in a 2005 peace accord. The deal created a semiautonomous southern government, allowed the south to keep an army and promised elections, followed by a referendum on southern independence in 2011.
Kuol Diem Kuol, the southern army spokesman, accused the north of conspiring with Lam Akol to arm the Shilluk attackers and encourage them to take revenge for past Dinka raids.
The attackers killed the Dinka chief Thon Wai, his two wives and three children, and burned down Bony-Thiang, he said.
Mr. Akol dismissed the accusations of his involvement as “absolute nonsense” and an attempt to smear his new political party.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_s4fTfBfGSXO3yTQQvkF75x5Bje-9h1HAhuYPtPZIX2zT_r32_OGTKbx5ux_ppvt5YqMmsc6AXRb0rrWtZjG4O4VZwoDULmQjPK0p0I73RNMjGBpuAvNxDemnJSPyOW27VMf_cCI2eZq3YxGxNgekNt=s0-d)
