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**Militiamen have killed at least 27 people in an attack in southern Sudan in the latest in a series of ethnic clashes, officials say.**UN sources said thousands of armed men from the Lou Nuer ethnic group attacked civilians and security forces in the village of Duk Padiet in Jonglei state.
Last month about 185 Lou Nuers were killed by ethnic Murle fighters in the same state.
Some 2,000 people have died in similar clashes across the south this year.
Southern army spokesman Kuol Diem Kuol said the attack on the village, which is mainly occupied by the Dinka Hol group, happened on Sunday morning.
“They overran our company plus the youth of the village,” he said.
Under a 2005 peace deal ending a two-decade war between north and south, former southern rebels formed a power-sharing government with President Omar al-Bashir’s party in Khartoum.
A national election is due next year and southern Sudanese are meant to vote in a referendum to decide whether to secede from the north in 2011.
The BBC’s Peter Martell, in the southern Sudanese capital Juba, says many people fear Khartoum is orchestrating the violence.
Some southern politicians believe Khartoum is arming militias from both sides in a bid to destabilise the region and delay the votes indefinitely.
But the south is made up of a patchwork of rival ethnic groups who have long fought over grazing land, cattle and other resources.
And Khartoum vehemently denies playing any part in the violence in the south.