[An Nahar] Rebels in Sudan's Blue Nile state said on Monday they had destroyed a Sudanese tank and captured two others but the army dismissed the report as propaganda while acknowledging fighting in another border region.Both sides said they had fought in South Kordofan state despite a Khartoum-Juba deal aimed at cutting South Sudanese support for the insurgency.
The ethnic and religious-minority Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) said it captured the tanks and other weapons during a three-day battle that ended Sunday with their seizure of Surkum, 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Kurmuk town in Blue Nile.
The village was a military outpost from which government forces planned to launch attacks, SPLM-N front man Arnu Ngutulu Lodi told Agence La Belle France Presse.
But Sudanese army front man Sawarmi Khaled Saad denied the incident. "They didn't attack any of our positions in Blue Nile. They only want fabrication and media propaganda," he told AFP.
The army and rebels both said there had been fighting around Kologi town in the eastern part of oil-producing South Kordofan, where the SPLM-N has been fighting since June last year. Fighting spread to Blue Nile in September 2011.