About 80 people, including 60 rebels, were killed on Saturday when government forces in the oil-rich South Sudanese Unity state repelled an attack by rebel militia, officials said.

'There was a militia attack at 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning in Mayom county,' said Unity Information Minister Gideon Gatpan Thoar.

Thoar said rebels, most of them fighting under the banner of the South Sudan Liberation Army (SSLA), attacked Mayom town and that the majority of the civilian casualties were residents gunned down while 'running for shelter.'

'We are counting the bodies now but over 60 militias were killed and many more wounded,' said Thoar, adding that 15 civilians were killed in the attack.

Among the dead was the notorious rebel fighter Colonel Ruadheal Gatwech, he said, adding that SPLA government forces also captured one soldier in Mayom town and three more in the east of the county.

'The situation is under control ... The rebels are still being chased away,' Thoar told AFP seven hours after the attack.

Officials could not give a precise figure on how many rebels attacked Mayom, but said that they were in the 'hundreds' and had come from South Kordofan, a state on Sudan's new border where conflict between government forces and rebels has flared since June.

'They were organised in South Kordofan. They are South Sudanese supported by Khartoum and trained there', said Philip Aguer, spokesman for South Sudan's military.

South Sudan seceded peacefully from the north in July following a referendum called for in a 2005 peace deal that ended a 22-year civil war, and both sides accuse the other of funding rebel groups.

Aguer said 11 civilians were killed and 16 wounded in the fight.

He said another six soldiers and three police were killed.

Thoar said the rebels had not given any motive for the attack but suspected they had come from South Kordofan to help local militias 'disrupt the disarmament' in Unity that has collected 1,000 guns, over half of them in Mayom.

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