Dec 2, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Corpses of people killed during heavy clashes between the Sudanese army and former southern rebels have contaminated part of the Nile river, which civilians were depending on for drinking water, the U.N. said on Saturday.

The fighting in the southern town of Malakal this week was the heaviest between government forces and their former southern rebel foes since they signed a peace deal last year ending Africa’s longest-running civil war, which erupted in 1983.

"Though United Nations peacekeepers have provided critical support to the Malakal government to dispose of the dead, the Nile remains contaminated by bodies as a result of the fighting," the United Nations said in a statement.

"Of particular concern is the population’s access to clean water in a city where cholera outbreaks are common. The United Nations has reported that civilians are drawing drinking water from the Nile river because some of the town’s water pumps have broken down," it said.

The United Nations would begin an assessment of Malakal’s water supplies on Saturday. The statement added that the United Nations and its partners had responded to 165 cases of cholera in the Malakal area since October.

There have been no official death toll figures for the clashes since they erupted on Nov. 28, although a top southern officer has said hundreds may have been killed, including combatants and civilians. Both sides agreed to a ceasefire on Friday, the U.N. statement said.

The world body said hundreds of civilians and soldiers were also wounded in the clashes and appealed for volunteer nurses and support staff to help.

SUDANESE ARMY ACCUSES FORMER REBELS

The Sudanese army accused the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) of starting the clashes, saying in a statement published on Saturday that the SPLA had besieged its garrison in Malakal.

It said the attack happened after a dispute between the former rebels and Gabriel Tang, a former pro-government militia commander and now an army general.

The SPLA has said militias belonging to the northern Sudanese Armed Forces attacked its members and the local commissioner of Malakal. They then took refuge in Sudanese military barracks near the airport and full combat began.

The SPLA is the military wing of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement.

Yasir Arman, a senior SPLM official, said on Thursday proxy militias operating in the south posed a threat to the security arrangements agreed with the government as part of last year’s peace deal.

Tang and his aides on Sunday denied triggering the clashes and said their troops in Malakal were not militias but members of the regular armed forces.

Sudan’s north-south peace deal formed separate north and south armies with joint armed units in main towns including Malakal, the capital of the Upper Nile region and potentially one of the most oil-rich regions in Sudan, which produces at least 330,000 barrels per day of crude.

The peace deal also shared power and wealth between the north and south, but implementation has been slow on key issues such as the demarcation of borders and ownership of oil fields.

The United Nations has some 10,000 peacekeepers in the south to monitor the agreement, help train police and human rights workers and provide other services.

(Reuters)