UN spokeswoman Hua Jiang earlier said Sudan had deployed around 15 tanks in Abyei. The spokesman said that gunshots could be heard in the town but it was unclear what exactly was happening.
Shooting broke out late Thursday as UN peacekeepers escorted 200 northern Sudan Armed Forces out of the contested area, with both armies accusing each other of starting the fight.
The north and the south have blamed each other for starting the fight. For all but 11 years since Sudan became independent in 1956, a civil war has been fought in the country, Africa’s largest by land mass. Abyei contributes more than a quarter of Sudan’s daily oil production of 480,000 barrels. Sudan’s proven crude oil reserves are nearly 2 billion barrels.
The south is important to the north because that’s where most of the country’s oil is produced. But refineries are in the north, as is the main pipeline carry oil for exports.
Fighting in Abyei has pitted former civil war enemies against each other since January when it was due to vote on its future alongside a referendum on the south's secession.
But the plebiscite was postponed indefinitely as the north and south disagreed on who should be eligible to vote in an area where conflicted loyalties and land disputes keep tensions high.
The Abyei Area covers 10,460 kilometers in the State of Northern Bahr el Ghazal in South Sudan. The issue of whether Abyei will remain a part of Northern Sudan or secede with the South is heavily contested between the North and South. As Abyei is home to both the ethnically Southern Dinka Ngok and the ethnically Northern Misseriya who rely on Abyei to graze their animals.
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005 determined that the question of whether Abyei should remain with Sudan or secede with the South should be decided through a referendum. However, while a referendum has been agreed it has not been conducted due to a dispute between the Northern and Southern Governments.
The North wants the Misseriya to be able to vote in the referendum, while the South wants to exclude the Misseriya herdsmen from participating in the vote. It is unlikely that the vote will go ahead without an agreement on who is allowed to vote.
In the past the boundaries of the Abyei region had been in dispute that erupted into violence and threatened the CPA. The North and South agreed to settle the dispute over Abyei’s boundaries through arbitration. The international arbitration process redrew Abyei's boundaries in 2009 and made it significantly smaller than what was claimed by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), extending no further north than 10°10′00” N. in Southern Kordofan. This revised border has since been endorsed and accepted by both parties to the dispute.
Philip Aguer, spokesman for the south’s army, told Agence France-Presse that fighting continued for a third day and accused the north’s Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) of bombing raids.
“The SAF have bombed several places in Abyei,” the SPLA spokesman said.
The United Nations called on Saturday for an “immediate cessation of hostilities” in Sudan’s contested border region.
The UN also urged all parties to “protect civilians” and called for “withdrawal of all unauthorized forces” from the area, in line with earlier agreements.
The appeal came as a UN Security Council delegation began a tour of three African states to assess peace and security threats, with a special focus on Abyei.
“We strongly encourage all parties to resume dialogue toward reaching a lasting political settlement,” the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said.
Abyei’s future is the most sensitive of a raft of issues that the two sides are struggling to reach agreement on before the south is recognized as an independent state in July.
(Mustapha Ajbaili, an Al Arabiya editor
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