FULL-SCALE ARMY ACTION BY SUDAN

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30823, 7 August 1965, Page 15

FULL-SCALE ARMY ACTION BY SUDAN

Attempt To Overcome \ iolence In South

(N.Z.P.A.- Reuter—Copyright/

KHARTOUM, August 6.

I he Sudan Government is launching a full-scale Army action to quell Southern violence in a deepening split with Negro separatists.

Terrorism, looting and atrocities against Southern citizens suspected of being loyal to the Government were alleged yesterday by the Prime Minister, Mr Mohammed Mahgoub. Moves announced last night included the closing of Uganda’s frontier with Sudan, to prevent refugees fleeing from the South.

Since 1955 there have been disturbances in the three Southern provinces of Equatoria, Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal, which are strictly Negro. or African, as opposed tr the six Northern provinces, which are Moslem. The Southerners, whose de ntands ~ange from complete independence to regional autonomy, have been pressing for a new constitutional and administ - five system An ultimatum to separatists to hand in their arms expired at midnight or Wednesday It was largely ignored, while the Soothe non issued their own rltimatum to the Arabs to quit the South by the end of August. Mr Mahgoub said at a press crnference in Nairobi yesterday that he had documents to prove allegations of foreign interference. A clash was reported on Wednesday in which Govern ment forces killed 16 rebels in a fr-aining camn in Equatoria The Government was accused of employing white mercenaries in the South in a communique issued it Nairobi yesterday bv the separatist Sudan African National Union. Mr J. H. Oduho. the leader of another Sudanese African Movement, the Azania Libera tion Front, said that the movement was demanding intervention bv the Organisation of African Unitv. He alleged that thousands of Sudanese were being killed.