Khartoum denies rebel claim of success

The rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) has claimed to have captured a steamer and two motor boats belonging to El Salaam Petroleum Company on Wednesday 15 August. The steamer, fitted with a barge and accompanied by the motor boats, was carrying oil workers, government troops and local militias during reconnaissance trips on the Bhar al-Jebel River between Lake No and Pan Zeraf, and the government was therefore using the steamer for military missions, according to SPLM/A spokesman Samson Kwaje. The SPLA had also captured a third motor boat dispatched on Thursday 16 August to look for the first three boats, he said, adding that a number of oil workers, government soldiers and militia members were being held as prisoners of war. The steamer and motor boats had been ferrying soldiers and allied militias to protect oil installations and fight the SPLA, and were therefore “legitimate military targets”, according to the rebels’ statement. As a result of the operations, the SPLA had “effectively blocked river transport between Malakal and Juba”, according to Kwaje. The movement was now “in full control of a significant portion of the River Nile”, making the eastern area of Unity (Wahdah) State, in Bentiu county, non-operational and “closed to all traffic, whether oil companies, fishing companies or Government of Sudan security”, he added. The Salma Development and Services Company, a firm running fishing operations in South Sudan, said the SPLA had seized two of its boats and nine personnel, the official ‘Al-Anbaa’ newspaper reported on Monday. Salma denied that the boat was travelling with military escorts and said it was returning with its catch from a routine fishing trip on Lake No when it was attacked, the report stated. One of the company’s launches was also seized when it went to look for the missing boat, the paper reported. The Sudanese army also denied the SPLA’s claim to have captured a Nile steamer and three military boats. “The army does not use such motor boats in the oil regions,” the official Sudanese News Agency (SUNA) quoted armed forces spokesman General Mohamed Bashir Sulayman as saying. Sulayman also claimed that the army had killed 15 rebels in the Dara area of the Nubah Mountains, and forced other attackers to flee, AFP reported. The battle was the latest in a string of recent military engagements in the Nubah Mountains, according to the army spokesman.