Nine killed after dancers clash at Sudan peace rally

JUBA, Sudan (Reuters) - At least nine people were killed in tribal clashes sparked by arguments between dancers at a peace rally, south Sudan's army said on Sunday.

Spokesman Peter Parnyang said nine members of the Shilluk tribe were killed in an attack by pastoralists from the Dinka tribe in south Sudan's Upper Nile State on Saturday.

"It is not finished," he said. "If they (the Shilluk) retaliate it could be very big."

Parnyang said traditional dancers from the tribes quarreled on Friday during celebrations to mark the fourth anniversary of Sudan's 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement -- a deal that ended two decades of north-south civil war.

The dancers were supposed to take part in a parade around the stadium in the state's capital Malakal before speeches by Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and Vice President Salva Kiir, also president of semi-autonomous south Sudan.

"There was an issue of who would go first, who second, Dinka or Shilluk," Parnyang said. "(In the quarrel) three were critically injured by spears."

International observers said policemen shot into the air to try to end the fighting. The clashes took place outside the stadium and no guests or speakers were wounded, they added.

Parnyang said Dinka fighters attacked the Shilluk north of Malakal on Saturday and that there were reports that two people, one a Shilluk, were killed in separate clashes close to Malakal.

South Sudan is awash with arms four years after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement ended the north-south conflict.

Upper Nile State, an oil-producing region, was controlled by competing militias during much of the war, many of them controlled by the north.

(Editing by Andrew Heavens and Elizabeth Piper)