Juba--South Sudan troops and rebels are fighting heavy battles close to vital oil production zones in the northeastern battleground state of Upper Nile, the United Nations said Wednesday.
Two mortar bombs hit the UN base in Melut, killing four civilians including a child, who were among more than 1,500 people sheltering there, the UN said. Eight others were wounded.
Melut lies some 35 kilometres (20 miles) west of the main oil production base at Palouch, which rebels are trying to capture.
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) said Wednesday it "strongly condemns the recent upsurge in fighting".
It was not possible to confirm rebel claims of fighting inside oil fields nor their reports of having killed scores of soldiers, which the government has dismissed as "lies".
The country's 17-month-long war broke out in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of attempting a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings across the country.
Rebel spokesman James Gadet Dak on Tuesday ordered oil companies to evacuate staff and said they were fighting to take the oil zones in Upper Nile to "deny Salva Kiir from using the oil revenues to perpetuate the war".
South Sudan, which won independence from Sudan in 2011 to become the world's youngest nation, once saw 95 percent of the government's budget come from oil revenues.
But oil production has slumped since war broke out, with many oil fields damaged in the fighting, badly denting the country's economy.
AFP
