SUDAN’S flashpoint Abyei area is a “Northern town,” the North’s occupying army has said, dismissing southern and international calls yesterday to pull troops out after days of fighting there.

ARMED men burned and looted the flashpoint town of Abyei yesterday, as Southern Sudan’s military said the northern army is moving to carry out a “full-scale war” in the region.

GOAL is pulling its staff out of Abyei in Sudan.

Northern Sudanese troops appeared to have seized the contested town of Abyei, a UN spokeswoman said, increasing fears of conflict as the country’s south prepares to become the world’s newest country.

More than 80 people were killed when rebels attacked cattle herders in Southern Sudan, while hundreds marched in the southern capital to protest at the unresolved status of a volatile border hotspot.

WITH five years’ involvement in Sudan, George Clooney has begun to define a new role for himself: 21st-century celebrity statesman.

SOUTH SUDAN will help the north get relief on about $38 billion (€27bn) in debt, as long as the north “co-operates” on a border dispute and other issues in the countdown to the country’s split, a southern official said.

Another bout of violence during this week’s independence referendum has killed 10 people, a security official in Southern Sudan said today.

The United Nations is preparing for the possibility of 2.8 million people being displaced if fighting breaks out over southern Sudan’s independence referendum, according to an internal report.

Britain led warnings over violence in Sudan as the UN Security Council extended the 13,500-strong UN peacekeeping mission there for a year.