S. Sudan Army Attacked By Rebels İn Upper Nile: Spokesman

South Sudan's army said Thursday that its troops had come under heavy fire from rebels loyal to sacked vice-president Riek Machar in Upper Nile State's Renk area on the border of Sudan.



"This morning, the forces of Riek Machar attacked Jebrna and Duduk in Renk," Col. Philip Aguer, spokesman for the Sudan People's Liberation Army (South Sudan's national army), told Anadolu Agency on Thursday.



"Again in the afternoon, there was shelling from the western part of the [Renk] river," he added.



According to Aguer, the attacks came one day after fighting erupted in the Gong-bar area in the same province.



"On Wednesday, [rebel forces] attacked Gong-bar, which was defended by one company of SPLA forces who later withdrew," he said.



Reinforcements had been sent to the area, he said, while refraining from providing a death toll, noting that SPLA forces were still under attack.



"The SPLA is capable of defeating the rebels; we will push them back to Sudan where they came from," he asserted.



The spokesman went on to say that the army was monitoring Unity State's border with Sudan in anticipation of fresh attacks. Nevertheless, he said the army would abide by a cessation-of-hostilities deal signed with the rebels earlier this year in Ethiopia.



"The SPLA is monitoring similar movements in Unity State along the border. The SPLA is ready to defend itself and remains committed to the cease-fire agreement," Aguer asserted.



"We are a government force and – in line with the agreement – we will continue to stay in our trenches and act only in self-defense," he added.



South Sudan has been shaken by violence since last December, when President Salva Kiir accused Machar of plotting to overthrow his regime.



Hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese have since been displaced in fighting between the two rivals, leading to an increasingly dire humanitarian situation for large swathes of the country's population.



In recent months, the warring camps have held on-again, off-again peace talks in Addis Ababa under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a Djibouti-based regional bloc.



In August, the two sides reportedly signed a "cessation-of-hostilities matrix" – covering security, social and economic arrangements, as well as political and constitutional issues – in hopes the agreement would lead to a permanent peace deal.



The rebel camp, however, says it never signed onto the agreement, but rather had merely recommitted to a January 23 cessation-of-hostilities deal. 



By Okech Francis



englishnews@aa.com.tr



www.aa.com.tr/en - Cuba