Sudan said today it would use "all legitimate ways and means" to oppose what it said was South Sudan's assault on an oil-producing border region disputed between the two countries and long marred by clashes.
The two former civil war foes have accused each other of provoking the clashes in the disputed area around Sudan's South Kordofan border state. South Sudan, which declared independence in July, has been locked in a dispute with Khartoum over oil payments and other issues.
Sudanese rebels said the Khartoum government was carrying out air and ground attacks in South Kordofan today.
South Sudan's army (SPLA) said it had repulsed an attack yesterday and pursued Sudanese troops into the disputed Heglig area, vital to Sudan's economy because it has an oil field that accounts for about half of its 115,000 barrel-a-day output.
But Khartoum said it was an aggression. "On Tuesday morning and afternoon, areas of South Kordofan state, most notably Heglig, were brutally attacked by the SPLA, supported by the state of South Sudan, using mercenary forces and rebel groups," Sudan's Information Ministry said.
"The government of Sudan announces it will oppose this flagrantly aggressive behaviour by all legitimate ways and means."
Al Jazeera television yesterday quoted a government source in Khartoum as saying South Sudan's army had taken control of the Heglig oil area, but South Sudan's military spokesman said he could not confirm the report.
The South Kordofan state has seen an insurgency since June by rebels who had fought as part of the southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army during the civil war. Fighting spread to the nearby Blue Nile state in September.
When Sudan was partitioned under a 2005 peace deal that ended the civil war, tens of thousands of fighters who had sided with the south were left north of the border. Sudan accuses Juba, the South Sudan capital, of continuing to back the insurgents, which South Sudan denies.
The rebels, renamed the SPLA-North, said they were fighting government forces in the villages of Toma and Hassan, about 45km west of Rashad town, today.
Reuters