Khartoum militia heading south: satellite images (AFP)

Wednesday, May 25, 2011 11:01 AM By dwi

JUBA, Sudan (AFP) – Militiamen hardback by the African government are heading southward to the criticality town Abyei as equipment images show troops, tanks and helicopters deploying, the UN said on Wednesday.

Heavily brachiate fighters of the nomadic Semite Misseriya tribe, key allies of the Khartoum government in the 1983-2005 subject struggle between northerly and south, were agitated towards the soon-to-be-independent south, UN peacekeepers said.

UN assignment spokeswoman Hua Jiang said: "Militia that appear to be Misseriya are agitated southwards. Abyei town is deserted of civilians."

Southern officials say that the pro-northern Misseriya, a cattle-herding grouping who traditionally advise finished Abyei each assemblage with their animals for water and pasture, are today entering Abyei in super numbers.

But that claim was unemployed as propaganda by a Misseriya tribal leader.

"It is nonsense, propaganda," said Sadiq Babo Nimer.

"There are no Misseriya tribesmen in Abyei for the ultimate think that it is inclement season and Misseriya do not bring their kine to Abyei before October," he said.

Thousands of Abyei residents -- mainly southern-supporting Dinka Ngok grouping -- impact fled crossways the abut into the southward and scores of houses impact been ordered on fire and property looted in the northern-controlled areas, the officials say.

A monitoring assemble said equipment images indicated grounds of "war crimes" committed by the Federal army.

"These images wage activity movie grounds of struggle crimes and crimes against humans in Abyei," said Evangelist Bradshaw, administrator of the Enough Project crusade group, part of the alinement championship the equipment work.

The Satellite Sentinel Project, which obtained and analysed the images, said they showed "evidence of attacks by armoured vehicles and the conclusion of villages."

US diplomatist to the United Nations Susan Rice warned of the "grave helper consequences" of the getting of Abyei town by Khartoum personnel as she and another Security Council delegates held talks in the gray regional capital Juba on Tuesday.

Rice said there were "horrific reports of pillaging and burning."

The UN's Hua Jiang said four peacekeeping helicopters were fired on as they took off from their Abyei base on Tuesday though these had not been hit.

Misseriya spokesman Babo Nimer said his folk had no connection to the incident and that it had "no problems" with the UN assignment or the planetary community.

But African President Omar al-Bashir rejected calls to vantage the personnel out.

Bashir has presented a "green light" to the north's Sudan Armed Forces to "respond to any violations" by gray forces, the authorised SUNA programme agency said late on Tuesday.

In a resistive speech in Khartoum, he scoffed at warnings from pedagogue to stop his forces or risk jeopardising profitable US efforts to change ties.

"Sudan is not greedy for the herb of America, and does not fear from its stick," Bashir was quoted as saying.

Abyei, a fertilised abut regularise claimed by both northerly and south, was due to balloting on its future in Jan alongside a referendum on independence for the south, which delivered a landslide for secession.

But Abyei's plebiscite did not hap amid arguments as to who was eligible to vote. On Saturday, Federal personnel and tanks overran the district.

The gray government has demanded that Federal personnel stop immediately.

The Satellite Sentinel Project, which provided the images, was ordered up by tone star and human rights reformist martyr Clooney last year.

The north's getting of Abyei, in the run-up to the planned planetary acceptance of gray independence in July, has been confiscated by field powers.

While Bashir said he desired to modify a "hand of peace to the south," he also repeated warnings that southerners in the northerly must yield after acceptance of gray independence on July 9.

"The southerners in the northerly will be presented a punctuation to settle their conditions, and (then) all southerners existing illegally in the northerly will be transported to the south," Bashir said.

Violence in and around Abyei has unvoluntary up to 40,000 grouping from their homes, a senior UN authorised said,.

"That includes whatever 10,000 grouping from Abyei area fleeing direct fighting and 25,000 more from the Agok area, just crossways the gray border, where grouping are leaving homes fearing future violence," said Lise Grande, who helps number UN helper efforts in the south.


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