UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday called for an immediate ceasefire between the Sudanese army and southern forces in the Abyei region, his office said.
"The Secretary-General is deeply concerned about the fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in the area of Abyei," that erupted on May 13, his office said in a statement.
"If the situation is not urgently addressed, the achievements thus far of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement could be placed at serious risk."
Ban urged "both parties to immediately observe the terms of the ceasefire agreed … on 18 May," and said "there can be no military solution to the parties’ differences over Abyei." Fighting raged on Tuesday in Abyei, a flashpoint oil district between north and south whose status remains contested three years after the end of civil war.
Aid workers said fighting went on for at least five hours between government troops and southern ex-rebels, who fought Africa’s longest civil war until reaching a fragile power-sharing peace agreement with Khartoum in 2005.