"All flights are grounded as from this morning," said Martin Dawes, spokesman for the UN-sponsored multi-agency aid group Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS).

He said Khartoum had informed OLS that its was banning flights over the two states of Western Equatoria and Eastern Equatoria for nine days starting Friday.

Most OLS flights originate from the organisation's relief base in the northwestern Kenyan town of Lokichoggio have to fly over the two provinces to reach an estimated three million people in need of aid in southern Sudan.

"We are extremely concerned for our beneficiaries and the security of our staff," said Dawes. He said about 300 employees of UN agencies or partner humanitarian groups work in southern Sudan at any given time.

Sudan ordered a general troop mobilisation early this month after the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) captured the town of Torit, opening the way for a possible march on Juba, the main city in southern Sudan.

The fall of Torit prompted Khartoum to pull out its negotiators from peace talks with SPLA that were taking place in the Kenyan town of Machakos.

"We condemn this very inhuman action by the government that can lead to a humanitarin disaster in southern Sudan," said the SPLA's Nairobi-based spokesman Samson Kwaje.

He said Khartoum had violated a tripartite agreement signed in 1989 under which the SPLA and the government promised to facilitate OLS's humanitarian work in southern Sudan.

Under that accord, no party can take a unilateral decision, Kwaje said.

Khartoum claimed on Thursday that its troops has recaptured an area in the southern Blue Nile province, inflicting "heavy losses" on the SPLA.

But the rebel movement denied the claim, saying the government was only boasting to boost the morale of its forces.

Kwaje, however, confirmed that fighting has been going all over southern Sudan since September 15, when the government organised a huge convoy from the north towards SPLA positions in the south and the Oil Road, currently under construction around the oilfields.

The United States on Thursday condemned the Sudanese government's recent bombing of civilian areas in southern Sudan and urged Khartoum to resume peace talks with rebels who operate there.

"We condemn the aerial bombing of civilian targets that the government of Sudan has carried out in southern Sudan during the past two weeks," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

The war in southern Sudan, increasingly fuelled by a struggle for key resources such as oil, has pitted the Arab and Muslim-dominated north against the mainly animist and Christian south since 1983.

(NAMPA/AFP)

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