Khartoum: South Sudan independence supporters clashed with riot police and pro-unity campaigners in Khartoum on Saturday as tensions mounted three months ahead of a referendum on southern secession.
The confrontation, pitting police against a group of up to 40 southerners, came as news emerged that south Sudan's president had asked UN Security Council envoys to deploy peacekeepers along the tense north-south border before the vote.
The oil-producing south was promised the referendum as part of a 2005 peace deal to end decades of civil war.
But Saturday's clashes highlighted the risk that simmering tensions over the vote could boil over, prompting a new conflict between the Muslim north and the south, where most of the population follow Christianity and traditional beliefs.
Riot police beat the group of southerners after they turned up at a 2,000-strong rally in support of Sudan's President Omar Hassan Al Bashir, timed to coincide with the visit of Security Council envoys to the capital, a Reuters witness said.
The southern protesters, most wearing orange caps and T- shirts, arrived at the rally shouting pro-independence slogans, witnesses said.
Riot police moved in after pro-unity supporters approached the southerners in downtown Khartoum, shouted at them to leave and pushed towards them.
Police beat the southerners with their fists and batons and arrested some of them, witnesses said.
Officials also hit three Westerners, two of them journalists, as they ordered them to leave the scene.
Security Council envoys, including Washington's UN Ambassador Susan Rice, were scheduled to meet Sudan's foreign minister in another part of downtown Khartoum at the same time as the protest.
The UN delegation took another route into town and did not come close to the protest, said a UN spokesman.
