KHARTOUM, Sudan - The United Nations said Thursday it had evacuated 250 civilian staff from the town of Abyei following three days of clashes in the oil-rich region between Sudan's army and former southern rebels.

Abyei lies just north of the disputed boundary line between north and south Sudan, which fought a civil war for more than two decades before a 2005 peace agreement. It is a volatile region that remains contested between northerners and southerners despite the accord.

Many of the south's former rebel leaders come from Abyei and frequently vow to reclaim the area, but Sudan's government is unwilling to let go of the area's lucrative oil fields.

The clashes began Tuesday between Sudanese soldiers and fighters for the semiautonomous south's Sudan People's Liberation Army.

Khaled Mansour, a spokesman for the UN Mission in Sudan, said there was concern for the safety of civilian employees and worries about overcrowding in the mission's compound from people seeking refuge from the fighting.

"We believe that their (staff) safety and security was threatened," Mansour said in Khartoum, adding that some 400 UN peacekeepers remained in Abyei.

UN officials said it was difficult to assess the number of casualties from this week's clashes, which they said had raged around Abyei's market, hospital and other areas.

Abyei has become a potential flashpoint that could wreck the fragile peace between the ethnic African south and Sudan's Arab-dominated government in the capital, Khartoum. Their 21-year civil war left an estimated two million people dead.

The peace agreement created a unity government led by President Omar al-Bashir and his one-time military rival, First Vice-President Salva Kiir. It also set up a semiautonomous southern government, led by Kiir, and called for national elections in 2009 and a referendum on independence for South Sudan in 2011.

The Sudanese People's Liberation Movement, which Kiir heads, has accused al-Bashir of multiple breaches of the 2005 accord, including not sharing oil wealth, not pulling troops out of South Sudan, and remilitarizing contested border zones, such as Abyei.

The clashes come at a particularly sensitive time for the Khartoum government.

Rebels from a separate conflict in the western region of Darfur attacked the outskirts of Khartoum over the weekend in the first rebel assault on the capital in decades. The attack was repelled, but at least 200 security members, rebels and civilians were killed.

The UN peacekeeping chief warned Wednesday of an alarming increase in violence in Darfur, noting it had spread to Khartoum and saying it could escalate.

The UN says up to 300,000 people have been killed in the Darfur conflict since 2003.

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