Sudan, South Sudan clash on new front

Sudan and South Sudan accused each other of launching attacks on a new front near their contested border, stoking fears of a return to all-out war in the oil-producing region.
The reports of the fresh fighting south of the Sudanese town of Mairem late on Tuesday came as the UN Security Council discussed imposing sanctions on the African neighbors if they did not stop the escalating border clashes.
There has been growing alarm over the worst violence seen since South Sudan split away from Sudan as an independent country in July under the terms of a 2005 peace settlement.
South Sudan seized the contested oil-producing Heglig region last week, prompting Sudan's parliament to brand its former civil war foe an "enemy" on Monday and to call for a swift recapture of the flat savanna region.
Both countries are highly dependent on oil. Any protracted fighting would severely damage their economies and disrupt the surrounding region.
Distrust runs deep between the neighbors, who are at loggerheads over the position of their border, how much the landlocked South should pay to transport its oil through Sudan and the division of national debt, among other issues.
Sudan said it had repulsed an attack on Tuesday by South Sudan's armed forces (SPLA) near the Bahr al-Arab river, known as the Kiir River in the south.

The report said the fighting took place 62 km south of Mairem which, maps show, is on the boundary between the Sudanese regions of South Kordofan and Darfur, the scene of a separate insurgency against the Khartoum government.