A South Sudanese woman, carrying food on her head, walk past closed
shops in Malakal, on January 12, 2014. South Sudanese troops fought
Sunday to win back the key oil town of Malakal from rebels loyal to
sacked vice president Riek Machar, the army said, a day after reclaiming
the strategic town of Bor. AFP PHOTO/SIMON MAINA
JUBA
South
Sudanese troops fought Sunday to win back the key oil town of Malakal
from rebels loyal to sacked vice president Riek Machar, the army said, a
day after reclaiming the strategic town of Bor.
The
army said its troops were launching an offensive to retake the
rebel-held southern portion of Malakal, the capital of Upper Nile state
and one of the main battlefields since fighting erupted last month
between rival forces loyal to Machar and President Salva Kiir.
Communications
with forces on the ground have been spotty, but as of late Saturday,
"they were preparing the final operation to clear the town," army
spokesman Philip Aguer told AFP.
Both rebels and the
government have claimed in recent days to control the northeastern town,
which has already changed hands twice and where rebels launched a new
offensive Monday.
The army meanwhile said that a day
after its key victory in Bor, the bitterly contested capital of Jonglei
State, the road linking the town to the capital, Juba, about 200
kilometres (130 miles) south, had been cleared.
"We are
telling the nation now that the Juba-Bor road is fully secured,"
Lieutenant General Malual Ayom Dor said in a statement issued from Bor.
But he said other parts of the eastern state were still a battlefield.
"The
liberation of Bor is not the liberation of Jonglei state. There are
other places still where the rebels are active," he said.
In
the third key battleground of Bentiu, the capital of the northern state
of Unity, the army spokesman said the situation was "quiet" Sunday.
South Sudan erupted into conflict on December 15, 2013 in what Kiir called a coup attempt by Machar, whom he sacked in July.
The former vice president denies the charge and accuses his ex-boss of trying to purge his rivals.
The
fighting has spiralled into ethnic killings between members of Kiir's
Dinka people -- the country's largest group -- and Machar's Nuer group.
Up to 10,000 people are believed to have been killed so far in the conflict in the world's newest nation.
The United Nations says 468,000 people have fled their homes because of the fighting.
State-linked
media in neighbouring Sudan said Sunday it had started admitting some
of the thousands of South Sudanese trying to flee the violence.
Officials
in White Nile state "confirmed that 1,500 refugees from South Sudan
were taken to Sudanese land through the border at Joda," reported the
Sudanese Media Centre, which is close to the security apparatus.
The
new arrivals have been given blankets, food, cooking utensils and other
aid, local refugee coordinator Al-Tayeb Mohammed Abdullah told the SMC.
Another 4,000 South Sudanese are gathered on the frontier and just south of it, he said.
More than 80,000 South Sudanese have fled the country over the past month, according to the UN refugee agency.
The
South Sudanese government and rebels are holding talks in neighbouring
Ethiopia, but they have made little concrete progress after two weeks.
On Saturday, the government said it was optimistic it could sign a ceasefire with the rebels within 48 hours.
But on Sunday rebel spokesman Hussein Mar Nyuot said the delegations were not even meeting.
"We haven't met today because the delegation of the government is still in Juba," he said.
"They will come tomorrow, we are told."
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