SUDAN: Sudan's veteran rebel leader, Dr John Garang, was in a jubilant mood yesterday. His troops had just captured Kapoeta, a heavily guarded garrison town, from the government. Sitting under a tree, he flipped an identity card onto the table.
The unsmiling face showed another man in uniform - that of the government commander whose bloated remains were rotting on the dirt runway a couple of miles away. "This was a great defeat, a massive victory," said the well-spoken, grey-bearded leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).
He may have been suffering from overstatemen. Kapoeta, a small outpost, will not win the war for him, but its capture represents a small yet strategic victory in the grind of Africa's longest-running, least publicised and most intractable war.
This year, the fighting has been exacerbated by an oil rush. The discovery of large reserves has seen government helicopter gunships clear entire villages in the oil producing areas. Canadian, Austrian and British companies are among those profiting.
The violent drive is described as the biggest offensive in many years. The Red Cross field hospital in northern Kenya - the largest of its kind in the world has been swamped with casualties. Last Sunday, the SPLA responded by taking Kapoeta.
Yesterday, rotting corpses still littered the ring of trenches around the town. Some were decapitated; others had been stripped down to their underwear. Vultures wheeled overhead as rebel troops rested on captured artillery.
However, there were few civilianswith whom to celebrate - they had fled hours earlier after a government Antonov plane dropped a scatter of bombs over the town. There were no casualties.
The Catholic church was in ruins, its blackened walls covered in a scrawl of Arabic lettering. By the altar, neatly uniformed rebels were preparing large vats of a porridge-like food.
One rebel held a tin of donated cooking oil.
The US government, whose flag was on the outside, presumably intended it for a hungry civilian, but skimming and the manipulation of aid have also become part of this war.
Dr Garang offered little hope for peace talks due to resume next Monday. Four peace intiatives are underway but none are making much headway. "It is a very complex situation," he admitted.
The government leader, President Omar Hassan al Bashir, vowed last weekend to achieve victory either through "negotiation or the barrel of a gun".