Khartoum — Gunmen attacked a village in the middle of the night in Sudan's flashpoint Abyei border region, killing five sleeping civilians, the region's administrator and UN sources said on Tuesday.
"Yesterday (Monday) at around 2 AM a group of gunmen attacked people while they were sleeping in Donyoub village, around nine kilometres (six miles) to the east of Abyei town," Deng Arop Kuol told AFP.
"We take them (the assailants) to be members of the (northern) Sudanese Armed Forces…This is the assumption," said Kuol, the district's southern-appointed administrator.
"Five civilians were killed and one wounded," he added.
The spokesman for the northern army could not immediately be reached for comment on the allegations.
Hua Jiang, the spokeswoman for the UN mission in Sudan, confirmed that armed men had opened fire in the village in the early hours of Monday morning, killing five people and wounding one, but said the identity of the assailants had not been established.
The attack comes just five days after the leaders of north and south Sudan agreed at an emergency meeting in Khartoum to act immediately to address concerns about troop buildups in the tense border region.
It also took place on the same day as the UN Security Council held a closed meeting on Sudan in New York, which was due to discuss the escalating tensions in Abyei.
The disputed area's future is the most sensitive of a raft of issues that the governments of north and south Sudan have been trying to resolve ahead of southern independence in July, which include borders, citizenship, security and debt.
Violence and recriminations have flared in Abyei this month, with at least 70 people killed in two days of fighting, and amid reports of the armies on both sides reinforcing their positions.
