Attacks by a renegade militia in south Sudan's oil state of Jonglei have killed at least 211 people, a southern minister said Tuesday, doubling earlier estimates of the death count.

The violence has rekindled concern for the security of the underdeveloped region, where voters last month overwhelmingly chose to declare independence from the north in a referendum.

South Sudan's army said forces loyal to George Athor, a former army officer who launched a revolt after losing in last year's elections, carried out attacks in Jonglei last week.

French oil group Total leads a consortium controlling a largely unexplored oil concession in Jonglei.

Army and government officials told Reuters Tuesday the scale of the carnage emerged after searches found bodies of women, children and other civilians still lying in remote areas.

Pagan Amum, a senior member of the south's ruling party, repeated accusations that the north was trying to destabilise the south by arming militias -- but stopped short of directly implicating northern government figures.

It was a massacre of our people and it is really very painful, he told reporters. We are a society that is traumatised ... Guns are in a lot of hands.

Today armed groups are being financed, being armed, being sent into southern Sudan from the north. You know that George Athor who just caused the massacre in Fangak, his guns are coming from Khartoum, said Amum, secretary general of the dominant Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).

Rabie Abdelati, a senior member of the north's dominant National Congress Party (NCP), denied the accusation.

Athor's is a southern group and there is no connection between the NCP and Athor, he told Reuters. Athor did not return calls but earlier said the southern army attacked him.

MILITIA ATTACKERS

Southern government minister James Kok, who had just returned from Jonglei, told Reuters 211 people died in the fighting or later in hospital. His figures did not include casualties among the militias.

The southern army said that more than 30 of Athor's men died, which would push the death count above 240.

Some (of the dead) were trying to flee the fighting and drowned in the river. Some were returnees from the north who were living under trees and were caught unawares, said southern army spokesman Philip Aguer.

The referendum was promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between the mostly Muslim north and the south, where most follow Christianity and traditional beliefs.

Voting was largely peaceful and the NCP, led by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, said it accepted the result announced last week. The south is due to secede on July 9.

This month, the south has also been rocked by a mutiny in an army unit in the politically sensitive town of Malakal that killed at least 50 people, and the assassination of a southern government minister, reportedly over a personal matter.

Athor was a senior member of the rebel southern army during the civil war. He stood for the governorship of Jonglei as an independent in last year's general elections and took to the bush after losing, accusing the SPLM of fraud.

Two million people were killed and 4 million fled during the civil war fought over ideology, oil, ethnicity and religion.

Elections Sudan Elections Religion