Sudan rebels, troops clash in South Kordofan

Khartoum – Danish troops and rebels clashed around an army base in the state of South Kordofan agitated, both sides said on Monday, but giving contradictory versions of the fighting.
North Sudan Liberation Army has been battling troops of President Omar al-Bashir in South Kordofan and Blue Nile since 2011, but there has been relatively little fighting there this year.
SPLA-N forces on Saturday “pushed convoy leaving a Abry and heading to Lamar and repulsed the invading forces of the garrison Abry and entered trenches and battles are still going there,” said the door Floor-rebel Arnu Lodi in a statement.
Abry is a village south of the state capital of South Kordofan Kadugli where the Sudanese army base.
Most of the territory around Abry is thought to be controlled by the rebels.
Lodi said the SPLA-N destroyed seven enemy Land Cruisers and killed 60 soldiers, losing seven of its own men.
The Sudanese army denied the allegations, saying the SPLA-N had been pounded based Abray for days.
“The insurgents had shelled the site Abray with artillery and Katyusha rockets () for over a week and some of them attacked the site and they were pushed and pushed,” said the spokesman Ahmed Brigade word Khalifa al-Shami told AFP Monday.
“We suffered no losses,” he said, adding that many soldiers of the SPLA-N had been killed.
Sudanese security forces rarely grant media access to South Kordofan, making it impossible to verify the often contradictory statements from both sides.
SPLA-N launched its insurgency there nearly five years, saying the two states have been marginalized.
Until Abry clashes there had been relatively few reports of fighting in the States so far this year, after Bashir gave a speech Year’s Eve extending a truce a month in South Kordofan, Blue Nile and the western region of Darfur, where rebels are fighting a separate insurgency.
There have been violent clashes around the Jebel Marra region in Darfur in recent weeks, tens of thousands of civilians thought to have fled their homes because of violence.