SPLA tells Arabstoday: We shot Sudanese drone

Colonel Philip Aguer Khartoum - Abed Algayom Ashmeag   A spokesperson for a South Sudanese political outfit has said that they were responsible for the downing of a government drone doing reconnaissance in a rebel-held territory on Tuesday. The Sudanese army howeve r claimed that the aircraft crashed because of a technical failure.
 Colonel Philip Aguer, a member of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), said: "The SPLA was able to shoot down a robot plane, in the northern border area of Jau.”
Jau is a disputed territory on the poorly-drawn boundary between Sudan's South Kordofan state and South Sudan, which seceded in July under a 2005 peace deal.
Meanwhile, the official spokesperson of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), Colonel Alswarmi Khaled, said: “The crash of the aircraft in South Kordofan was due to a technical failure, during a routine operation."
Aguer said to Arabstoday: “The region has been exposed to aerial bombardment for three months, leading to the displacement of majority of the population. Three aircraft carried out attacks on Jau, however, the SPLA shot one of them down and it was unmanned. The two other aircrafts were able to return to the Sudanese territory.”
The South army spokesman added that “talks about positive dialogue in Addis Ababa between Sudan and Juba has not been reflected in reality so far.” He also stated that Jau had witnessed intense military action waged by the Sudanese army, and that the aircraft were the same ones that attacked the forces of  Abdul Aziz al-Helw, who leads a rebellion in South Kordofan against Khartoum.
Regarding declarations by the insurgent outfits Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Revolution Front (SRF) that they shot down the aircraft, Aguer said: “I have no information about this right now, but what I can say is that the plane was shot inside our territory as it crossed the border of the South. It will arrive in Juba soon as evidence of continuin Sudanese aggression, and its non-commitment to the implementation of the agreements signed between us and them.”
The SRF, an alliance of diverse rebels who want to overthrow Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, claimed they shot down the aircraft at 11.20am (8.20 GMT) in the Jau area.
"The aircraft was flying in liberated territory on a reconnaissance mission, and as it entered the military camps, (rebel) anti-aircraft weapons confronted it," the rebels said in a statement, listing Darfur's JEM as one of the rebel groups involved.
It said the drone had carried "1-3-7R031" as an identification sign. A separate statement by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, another rebel group involved in the fighting, said the aircraft appeared to be made in Iran.
Fighting broke out in Sudan's South Kordofan state in June last year and later spread to Blue Nile state. The regions are home to tens of thousands of fighters who fought alongside the south during the civil war and have not disarmed.
The rebels accuse the government of provoking the fighting, while Khartoum says the insurgents are trying to spread chaos and overthrow the state with Juba's backing.
A separate insurgency in the western Darfur region has raged since 2003, when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms, accusing the Arab-dominated government of neglecting the remote territory.
Rebel groups from those regions said in November they were joining forces to create the Sudanese Revolutionary Front.
Fighting has continued in the country's peripheries since then, but conflicting reports from rebels and Sudan's government are difficult to verify because access by independent observers is limited.