Officials: UK aid group staff beaten in South Sudan

Aid officials accused South Sudanese soldiers of arresting and beating four members of a UK aid group in a politically-sensitive area of the oil-producing region, but the army denied any use of violence. South Sudan's army said the one Kenyan and three Sudanese workers for aid group Tearfund were arrested on suspicion of helping anti-government militias. Soldiers stopped the four men Sunday at a roadblock near Kodok in the south's Upper Nile state, aid officials said, an area the southern army says is occupied by supporters of southern opposition leader Lam Akol. The southern army has accused Akol, Sudan's former foreign minister, of leading a band of militia fighters in the region, an accusation he denies. Akol, who split away from the south's dominant Sudan People's Liberation Movement to form his own Democratic Change faction last year, accuses southern authorities of persecuting his supporters and rigging April elections.