Juba - Heavy fighting broke out Wednesday in South Sudan's war-ravaged northeastern town of Malakal, pitting rival factions of government troops against each other, the army and aid workers said.
The town had already been left in ruins last year after repeatedly swapping hands between rebels and the government.
The latest clashes in the capital of the oil-producing Upper Nile state pitted troops loyal to the state governor against those of rogue general Johnson Olony, an ex-rebel who commands a pro-government ethnic Shilluk militia.
Last month, Olony was ordered to report to army headquarters after the United Nations reported he had abducted many child soldiers, perhaps as many as hundreds.
In Malakal, powerful explosions could be heard shortly after dawn, said an aid worker in the town who asked not to be named.
Army spokesman Philip Aguer said two soldiers had been killed in the fighting that first broke out late on Tuesday due to a "misunderstanding", and again on Wednesday morning. Shooting calmed later in the afternoon.
Aguer said rumours Olony had defected to rebels were "cheap propaganda."
Residents of Malakal told independent Radio Tamazuj they could hear "gunfire from all sides".
The violence is the latest round in South Sudan's civil war, which erupted in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused Riek Machar, who had been sacked as vice president, of attempting a coup.
The war that is devastating the world's youngest nation has killed tens of thousands of people, and left over half of the country's 12 million people in need of aid, according to the United Nations.
AFP
