A refugee camp in South Sudan's Unity state was bombed on Thursday , South Sudan officials and witnesses said , threatening to raise tensions with Sudan .
bombed
refugee camp south sudan's unity state bomb thursday south sudan official witness say threaten raise tension sudan
A refugee camp in South Sudan's Unity state was <m> bombed </m> on Thursday , South Sudan officials and witnesses said , threatening to raise tensions with Sudan .
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South Sudan : "Sudan bombed refugee camp"
Published on : 11 November 2011 - 11 : 25am
A refugee camp in South Sudan's Unity state was <m> bombed </m> on Thursday , South Sudan officials and witnesses said , threatening to raise tensions with Sudan .
Sudan's armed forces denied they carried out the strike .
South Sudan's president Salva Kiir talked of Sudan's "pending invasion" of its neighbour .
Violence along the poorly defined border since South Sudan's independence in July has strained ties between the two nations .
They have accused one another of backing rebel groups on their sides of the border .
A reporter heard a large explosion in the Yida refugee camp , then saw a crater about two metres wide , an unexploded bomb wedged in the side of a school building and a white aircraft flying north .
Witnesses said there were three further explosions at 3 p . m .
Yida is a camp of about 20 , 000 refugees from the Nuba Mountains region of South Kordofan , a state north of the border where rebels have been fighting Sudan's army since June .
The camp is less than 25 kilometres from the border with Sudan .
There were no immediate reports of any casualties .
Khartoum denies
Taban Deng , the governor of Unity state , accused Khartoum of carrying out the attack .
"These people ( Khartoum ) should be taken to book .
They should adhere to international laws and regulations , " Deng told reporters in Bentiu .
"The refugees need to be safe and need to be protected .
They ran away from war .
They should not be pursued inside the territory of South Sudan , " he said .
Al - Sawarmi Khalid , spokesman for Sudan's armed forces , said Sudan had not bombed anywhere in South Sudan's territory .
"South Sudan is a state in the United Nations .
We respect international law , and it's impossible that we would do that , " he said .
South Sudan split off into a separate country in July after voting overwhelmingly for secession in a January referendum , the culmination of a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of war between north and south .
Fighting in Blue Nile state
Fire crackled in the dry grass around the crater about 100 metres away from an aid agency compound in Yida camp .
"They ( Khartoum ) don't want any life in the Nuba Mountains , and now they are expanding the war to the South Sudan republic , " said Yousif Ismail , a refugee from the Nuba mountains .
Fighting has broken out in Sudan's Blue Nile state this year .
Blue Nile and South Kordofan are home to tens of thousands of fighters who sided with the south during the war but were left in Sudan when South Sudan seceded , analysts say .
Khartoum's smoke screens
Last week , Khartoum submitted its second complaint to the UN Security Council , accusing South Sudan of supplying anti - aircraft and anti - tank missiles , ammunition , landmines and mortars to the insurgents .
Kiir denied those claims in a statement on Thursday , calling them "smoke screens to mask Khartoum's own activities in support of the armed dissident groups that are fighting its proxy war against the Republic of South Sudan" .
The accusations were being used to justify Sudan's "pending invasion of the South , " Kiir said .
The two countries have yet to agree on how much the new nation will pay to use Sudan's oil pipelines and other facilities , which South Sudan depends on to export crude .
They also dispute control of the Abyei region .
Some 2 million people died in the north - south civil war , waged for all but a few years since 1955 over religion , ideology , ethnicity and oil .