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 The United Nations said on Thursday a crowd of Nuer tribesmen
breached a U.N. compound in Jonglei State north of the capital and
it had reports some people were killed.
President Salva Kiir, a member of the Dinka ethnic group, has
accused his former Vice President Riek Machar, a Nuer who was sacked
in July, of attempting to seize power by force.
Fighting that began on Sunday in the capital has swiftly spread,
fuelled by ethnic divisions.
Kiir has said he is ready for dialogue. Machar told French radio
that he was ready to "negotiate his departure from power" and said
the army could force Kiir out if he did not quit.
"President Kiir has always said that he doesn't want his people to
turn back again to war," Foreign Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin
told Reuters. "That is why the government has been negotiating with
a lot of militia groups."
Kiir was due to hold talks on Friday with ministers from Ethiopia,
Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti and Somali, along with representatives from
the African Union and United Nations.
Fighting that has spread to vital oil fields worries neighboring
states, who fear new instability in a volatile region of the
continent. It threatens what were already only halting steps towards
creating a functioning state that declared independence from Sudan
in 2011 after decades of conflict.
Officials have said till now that oil production, which had stood at
about 245,000 barrels per day and provides most of South Sudan's
revenues, have not been affected.
A source in Sudan, which hosts the sole export pipeline, said on
Thursday there had been no disruption.
But 200 oil workers sought refuge in a U.N. base on Thursday. China
National Petroleum Corp, one of the main operators, said it was
flying 32 workers out of one field to Juba, according the Chinese
state news agency Xinhua.
ETHNIC TENSIONS
The foreign minister and other officials have sought to play down
the ethnic rifts, blaming the fighting on political differences. But
since fighting moved beyond the capital, clashes have been
increasingly driven by ethnic loyalties.
"So we have a military coup in our hands which is causing a lot of
instability in the country and is being played up in certain areas
as if it is a racial ethnic war, which is not the case," Benjamin
said.
"We don't want to encourage what happened in Rwanda," he said, a
reference to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
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The United Nations said on Tuesday it understood up to 500 people
had been killed in clashes but has not given a death toll since
then. It says about 34,000 people have fled to bases of the UNMISS
peacekeeping mission since fighting started.
Clashes in Bor town, where Nuer in 1991 massacred Dinka, have
fuelled the fears of an ethnic war. A Nuer commander and Machar
ally, Peter Gadet, now controls Bor, officials said.
A U.N. official said Luo Nuer youths, from a sub-group of Machar's
Nuer ethnic group, had assaulted the Akobo base in Jonglei, saying
there were believed to be some deaths.
Presidential spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny told Reuters that 54 people
from Kiir's Dinka ethnic group were killed by what he called Machar
loyalists in the Akobo raid.
Political tensions between the two politicians had been mounting
since Kiir, facing mounting public frustration about the slow pace
of development, sacked Machar.
The former vice president said he wanted to run for office and
accused Kiir of acting like a dictator.
Speaking to France's RFI radio, Machar said that if Kiir did quit
office: "I think the people will depose him, in particular,
influential people in the army."
Before the fighting erupted, Kiir accused his rivals of reviving the
kind of splits in the ranks of ruling SPLM party that led to led to
bloodshed in 1991. But analysts said he had raised the stakes by
branding initial clashes a coup attempt.
(Additional reporting by Drazen Jorgic in Nairobi, Aizu Chen in
Singapore and Maggie Fick in Cairo; writing by Edmund Blair; editing
by Angus MacSwan)
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