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Sudanese clash for third day
From correspondents in Khartoum
04aug05

NORTHERN and southern Sudanese leaders called for calm today during a third day of clashes in the capital that have killed at least 84 people since the death of former southern rebel John Garang.

Violence in Khartoum erupted on Monday when angry southerners took to the streets after the official announcement of the death in a helicopter crash of Mr Garang, who fought the northern government for two decades before making peace.

"There are quite a number of casualties and it's quite serious," UN spokeswoman Radhia Achouri said.

Some northerners responded to Monday's looting and attacks by forming vigilante groups, roaming the streets.

The violence has raised fears that fresh north-south tensions could undermine a January peace deal between Garang's former rebel movement and the Islamic northern government.

"Peace is being jeopardised in the short run," the top UN envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk, said.

Southerners fear the absence of Mr Garang, who became first vice president on July 9 under the peace agreement, could weaken their hand in governing the oil-exporting nation.

Sudan is divided between an Arabised Muslim north and the south that is a mix of African ethnicities with Christians, animists and Muslims.

"I urge all the good people among you to bury the strife," President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on state television, adding that he had ordered measures to protect lives and property.

Mr Bashir said he had issued a decree establishing a joint committee with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), which Mr Garang headed, to investigate the helicopter crash which killed him.

There has been no suggestion of foul play.

Salva Kiir, who has swiftly been installed as the new head of the SPLM, echoed Mr Bashir's call for calm in the southern settlement of New Site where he met top US and South African envoys on a diplomatic push to maintain the fragile peace pact.

"Enemies of peace may want to take opportunity of this situation," General Kiir said.

"We are appealing to all the Sudanese people to refrain from any hostility."

US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Connie Newman and the US special envoy to Sudan, Roger Winter, met SPLM officials and are due to go to Khartoum to meet Mr Bashir.

"We came to express our continued support for the ... peace agreement and the people of Sudan," Ms Newman said.

The violence is the worst in Khartoum in years. But many streets in the capital had emptied, except for police and soldiers on patrol, as a 9pm (4am AEST) curfew approached.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it counted 84 bodies in a morgue, all killed since Monday.

William Ezekiel, editor of the Khartoum Monitor with close ties to the southern community, said groups of five to 10 men with sticks and knives and some with rifles, had patrolled overnight despite the curfew.

"They were shouting 'God is great, God is great,' and saying they were fighting the non-believers," he said.

Southern Sudanese killed the Imam of the local mosque in the capital's Kalakla suburb, a UN security briefing said.

Today's violence, that began in the capital's suburbs, spread to a downtown area following rumours that a southern militia leader had been killed. The leader later appeared on television to refute the talk.

Streets had been full of cars heading out of the city centre and five truckloads of soldiers and riot police headed into the central residential and commercial area, witnesses said. Gunshots were also heard and teargas was fired, they said.

In the south, Bolen Kenyi, editor of the Juba Post, said demonstrations had turned violent in Juba on Monday, with southerners attacking shops and houses of northern traders.

He said hospitals in Juba, where Mr Garang's funeral will take place on Saturday, reported one person killed and 35 injured.

The conflict in south Sudan began in 1983 when the Islamist Khartoum government tried to impose sharia Islamic law. Two million people were killed, mainly by hunger and disease.

The peace deal included giving southerners the right to vote on secession after a six-year interim period and shared out Sudan's oil wealth between north and south roughly equally.

Sudan also faces continued civil strife in its western Darfur region, which has killed tens of thousands and forced around 2 million from their homes.

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