South Sudan rivals battle over key oil region

Juba (AFP) - South Sudanese government forces were Thursday battling to retake the key rebel-held town of Bentiu, as Washington warned the world's youngest nation was "in danger of shattering".

Peace talks in neighbouring Ethiopia appeared deadlocked as fighting raged in the oil-rich Unity State in the north, and around Bor, capital of eastern Jonglei state, both main rebel strongholds.

"Today, tragically, the world's youngest country and undoubtedly one of its most fragile democracies is in danger of shattering," US Assistant Secretary for Africa Linda Thomas-Greenfield told lawmakers in Washington.

"Each day that the conflict continues, the risk of all-out civil war grows as ethnic tensions rise."

South Sudanese army spokesman Philip Aguer told AFP that troops loyal to President Salva Kiir were now "next to Bentiu", capital of Unity State, and that clashes were continuing Thursday.

The UN aid chief in the country, Toby Lanzer, described a scene of anarchy inside the town. Shops "have been looted and destroyed", aid agency vehicles were being commandeered by armed gangs and civilians had fled, he said.

Unity State is where much of fledgling oil producer South Sudan's crude is pumped. The country's oil production has dropped by around a fifth since the fighting began, depriving the impoverished nation of a key source of foriegn currency.

The army spokesman said government troops were also locked in combat some 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Bor, situated 200 kilometres north of Juba, the only other major town in rebel hands.

An AFP correspondent in Minkammen, on the other side of the swamps of the crocodile-infested White Nile river from Bor, said hundreds of people are making a perilous journey by boat and on foot to escape the fighting. There were already 80,000 people there -- the single largest concentration of those displaced by the conflict.

Many recounted tales of horror, including civilians mown down with machine guns as they fled, and gunmen torching entire villages and looting crops and livestock.

"They had a machine gun raised up on a sandbank, and they fired and fired and fired as we swam," said Gabriel Bol, a cattle herder. "The bullets were hitting the water, but we knew we could not stop or they'd shoot us."

Peace talks deadlocked

The unrest began on December 15 as a clash between rival army units in what President Kiir said was an attempted coup by ex-vice president Riek Machar.

It has escalated into war between government troops and a loose alliance of ethnic militia forces and army units who have defected to the rebel side, of which Machar has become the de facto leader.

But Thomas-Greenfield said that "we have not seen any evidence that this was a coup attempt".

Rather she said the eruption of violence had been "the consequence of a huge political rift" in the country.

"Political rivalries have taken on ethnic dimensions, atrocities are being committed, and men, women, and children are caught in the crossfire. This is not the future for which the people of South Sudan voted," she said.

The exact toll of the conflict is unclear. The UN has said well over a thousand people have died, although sources from a number of relief organisations say they believe the number of fatalities is well into the thousands.

The US special envoy to Sudan and South Sudan, Donald Booth, shied away from calling the situation all-out civil war.

"Let's just call it a conflict right now, lets not escalate it ourselves," he told AFP in Addis Ababa, where the East African regional bloc IGAD has been trying to broker a truce.

He said the fate of political prisoners "has been a stumbling block" for the peace talks.

South Sudan's government is currently holding 11 of Machar's allies, many of them senior figures and former ministers, and has been under pressure from IGAD as well as Western diplomats to release them as a goodwill gesture.

The demands have been resisted until now, with the government arguing the detainees should be put on trial for their role in what the president says was an attempted coup.

A further source of tension has been rebel allegations that neighbouring Uganda has been providing crucial military support for the government.

"While IGAD countries are pursuing peaceful solution to the conflict, Uganda military are busy killing our innocent population in Jonglei state," rebel spokesman Hussein Mar Nyuot told reporters in the Ethiopian capital.

He said the rebels were "disappointed" by Juba's refusal to free the prisoners, but said talks would continue.

"I can't say actually that the talks are going to collapse," the spokesman said. "We are still hopeful that there is big pressure on (President) Salva Kiir, and that he might actually change his mind."