and now the other side of the story...
Sudan "repels" rebel attack in oil region, denies oil fields hit
KHARTOUM, Jan 28 (AFP) - The Sudanese government said Sunday its
troops have driven back an attack by rebels in the southern oil
region and denied rebel claims that oil production facilities had
been destroyed.
Armed Forces spokesman General Mohammed Osman Yassin told
state-run SUNA news agency that his troops withstood the "failed
attack" by the Sudan People's Liberation Army Friday night east of
Mayom town in Unity State.
The government forces inflicted "heavy losses in lives and
equipment on the rebels and forced the remaining rebels to flee,"
Yassin told SUNA.
"Our troops repulsed the attack in a 90-minute battle and fully
secured the area and are now mopping it up and counting the
casualties of the rebels," General Yassin said.
He described SPLA claims that the rebels attacked the oil
production areas as a "media propaganda aimed at raising rebel
morale and earning sympathy of foreign supporters."
Yassin said the attak was launched in a new oil survey area
outside the production areas which are "fully stable with roads,
hospitals and schools being built and civilians fleeing the rebel
tanks and fighting alongside the government troops."
Sudan's energy and mining ministry's secretary general Hassan
Mohammed Ali al-Taum, meanwhile, dismissed as "incorrect" the SPLA
report that it had destroyed three oil wells and equipment in
Bentiu.
Taum said the attack was unorganized in an area outside the oil
fields and that the production and exploration operations were not
affected by the attack, which he said was aimed at "confusing public
opinion and investors."
In a telephone conversation with AFP Cairo, SPLA spokesman
Yasser Arman said Saturday the rebels for the first time hit oil
production and extraction areas in the Bentiu region of al-Wihda
overnight Friday and Saturday.
Arman, who was speaking from Eritrea, said "three camps of
government forces and pro-Khartoum militias that guard the oil
zones" were destroyed, killing "dozens" of Sudanese army soldiers.
He said the SPLA considered oil installations legitimate targets
because oil revenues are used to finance the government's campaign
against southern separatists, which western experts say costs one
million dollars a day.
Sudan has been engulfed in a civil war since 1983 pitting the
Arab and Muslim north against the largely Christian and animist
south.
Sudan started exporting oil in August 1999, through a pipeline
linking Heiglig to the Red Sea terminal of Beshair. |
