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Sudan oil region fighting could displace 90,000: UN

ABYEI, Sudan-Up to 90,000 people could be displaced by fighting in Sudan's contested oil region of Abyei where the United Nations is racing against time to provide aid relief and prevent a return to civil war.Two rounds of fighting between government soldiers and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) have largely obliterated Abyei's once bustling main town of mud huts that was home to 30,000 people two weeks ago.The market is charred and flattened. Buildings have been reduced to skeletons and burnt-out vehicles are abandoned to the dust.On the horizon, smoke coils into the air from isolated fires. In the eery silence of the ghost town, handfuls of people loot what they can with apparent impunity as government troops look on.Viewing the centre of town from the back of a UN armoured personnel carrier under heavy protection from Zambian peacekeepers, Ashraf Qazi, the special representative of the UN chief to Sudan, likened Abyei to hell."It doesn't exist any more. It's totally charred. It's totally devastated.And it's an absolute human tragedy and it is something that must never happen again," he told reporters on Friday.Casualty figures are unclear.The army says 22 of its soldiers were killed and 45 wounded on Tuesday, in fighting that broke a UN-brokered ceasefire after clashes last week.Further south in Agok, where aid workers are concentrating relief efforts in punishing heat and battling shortages of equipment, medics said they treated 135 wounded-all but one from the SPLA.The fighting is the worst crisis to beset the three-year peace accord that ended Africa's longest-running civil war between north and south Sudan, since the south walked out of the national unity government for two months last year.UN-chaired committees grouping northern and southern leaders, tasked with smoothing over difficulties in implementing the peace agreement, have not met since the latest fighting, although calm has now returned."That's what we're resolved in right now. Trying to ensure that this situation doesn't deteriorate further and doesn't spark off something much bigger," Qazi said. "That is a risk."After a civil war that killed more than 1.5 million people, the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) gave the south six years of regional autonomy and participation in a national government until a 2011 referendum on independence.Abyei, on the border between north and south, was accorded special status. But half-way through the six-year transition period, the region has still never been governed by a functioning joint administration as stipulated.Tensions are likely to increase in the run-up to 2011, when the zone settled by Ngok Dinka and used by nomadic Arab tribesmen for grazing, will also vote on whether to retain its special status in the Arab north or join the Christian and animist south."We can see that with any one issue, with Abyei in particular, if violence flares up it could easily spread to other areas and easily threaten the whole CPA," said Qazi in Abyei."We are working intensively with the two sides to overcome this crisis."Aid workers fear that further deterioration in Abyei-where the estimated half-a-billion dollar oil wealth is at the heart of the north-south dispute-could displace many more people than initially feared."We could have up to 90,000 people on the move," Abyei UN resident coordinator Jason Matus, now in Agok, briefed Qazi."We are in a race against time," said Andy Pendleton, the head of the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in southern Sudan.Heavy rains are scheduled to start in around two weeks. Water-borne diseases could then spread unless people have adequate shelter, food and properly dug latrines.Sudan's military has controlled Abyei since the latest fighting saw the SPLA redeploy south. The town is supposed to be patrolled jointly and the expulsion of the SPLA has sparked fears of renewed violence."If we are out of Abyei and they (the Arabs) are in, then we know there will be fighting," said Mam Thuc, a widow with 10 children who fled to Agok.Her husband was killed when the family's dream of coming home was shattered by renewed violence."We were IDPs (internally displaced people) from Khartoum. We came back and within six months this happened," said Thuc.Although any such decision is likely to a political one, asked whether the army would allow the SPLA back into Abyei, local commander Brigadier General Muntasir Sabil, told AFP: "Of course, no. They would come back and attack us."

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