SUDAN: South Sudan Violence Kills At Least 800 This Year-UN

More than 800 people have been killed this year in a rise in violence in south Sudan before its independence in July, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

Southern Sudanese voted to separate from the north in a January referendum, promised to them as part of a 2005 peace accord which ended decades of civil war in Sudan. The war claimed some two million lives and destabilised much of the region.

The referendum stirred great optimism and celebrations across the oil-producing south but renewed violence in the south has since taken hold.

This year 151 incidents across nine of the south's ten states have killed 801 people and displaced nearly 94,000 more, according to the United Nations. The violence had also crippled development.

Some analysts say the building momentum of southern insecurity -- rebel militia battling the army, Uganda's LRA rebels raiding agricultural land, tribes fighting over resources -- may sink the south after independence.

"We are worried, with at least seven militia that are active, with inter-communal violence continuing, with the LRA active in Western Equatoria. This is not a good picture," said Lise Grande, the Unied Nation's senior humanitarian official in the south.

Grande said the wave of conflict in the last two months had stalled the headway needed in building the new African nation starting almost from scratch and the rainy season would soon make much of the region inaccessible.

"We can't start winding down an emergency operation if (nearly) 100,000 people have been displaced," she said in a news conference, adding that emergency relief was now underway in about half of southern counties.

Grande singled out Uganda's LRA rebels as posing a persistent threat to any hope of the south feeding itself.

"LRA attacks keep happening every couple of weeks and when it happens people become terrorised, they don't plant ... this has a big impact on food security around the south as a whole."

Last year the United Nations said almost half the southern population was short of food.

Militia groups have clashed with the southern army including a February massacre which claimed 200 lives. And long-standing tribal rivalries have reignited, leading to 31 deaths in the first two weeks of April.

These crises are compounded by the hundreds of thousands of southerners returning to the region from the north and the diaspora before the looming independence. Some 264,000 have returned since October and another 300,000 are still expected to arrive, according to the United Nations.

Many hope July's independence celebrations could become a rallying cry for peace and unity. But analysts see any unity would be short-lived given how quickly southern tensions reemerged after the euphoria of the referendum.

The south has fought the north for all but a few years since 1955 over differences in religion, ideology, ethnicity and oil.