South Sudan rebels take key town

South Sudanese rebels battled their way to the center of the strategically important town of Bor on Tuesday and were in control of some neighborhoods as the fighting raged on, the town’s mayor and a government minister said.

“The town is still partly in our hands and partly in the hands of the rebels,” Mayor Nhial Majak Nhial told Reuters from the government’s military headquarters inside Bor, 190 kms north of Juba, the capital.

Information Minister Michael Makuei said: “This morning (the rebels) advanced to the center. The fighting is still taking place.”

South Sudan’s neighbors have given the warring sides until Tuesday to lay down their arms and begin talks – but there has been no sign of the hostilities ending. The precise moment the deadline expires is not clear.

The clashes erupted on December 15 with fighting among a group of soldiers in Juba. The violence quickly spread to half of the country’s ten states, cleaving the nation along the ethnic faultline of Machar’s Nuer group and President Salva Kiir’s Dinka.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said on Monday east African nations had agreed to move in and defeat former Vice President Machar if he rejected a government ceasefire offer. There was no immediate confirmation of the pact from other nations.

But Museveni’s words demonstrated the scale of regional worry over the fighting which has reached some of South Sudan’s oil fields, forcing a cut in output.

The scene of an ethnic massacre of Dinka in 1991 by Nuer fighters loyal to Machar, Bor was briefly seized by the rebels early in the conflict before being retaken by government troops after several days of heavy fighting.

A spokesman for the government of South Sudan’s Unity state, controlled by forces loyal to Machar, previously denied Machar was in control of the White Army fighters, raising the prospect that the violence was spreading beyond the control of widely recognized ethnic leaders.

About 70,000 civilians have fled Bor and sought refuge in the town of Awerial in neighboring Lakes state, with no access to food, clean water or shelter, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said. Others were hiding in swamps.