KHARTOUM, Feb 15 (Reuters) - South Sudanese fired from their government jobs in neighbouring Sudan blocked a major road in Sudan's capital Khartoum on Wednesday, hurling rocks at passing cars and demanding severance benefits, witnesses said.
Sudan has ruled out dual nationality for southerners after South Sudan seceded in July under a 2005 peace deal, throwing into legal uncertainty hundreds of thousands of people who have lived in the north for decades.
Khartoum has also dismissed ethnic southerners working for the government and about 100 people who lost their jobs gathered on a main road running past Khartoum's airport to demand they receive post-service pay, witnesses said.
"We want our rights," the protesters chanted. Sudanese riot police dispersed the demonstrators and spread out in the area to protect nearby facilities.
Sudan has avoided the mass protest movements that ousted leaders in neighbouring Egypt and in Tunisia, but small demonstrations have broken out over rising food prices and other issues over the past year.
South Sudan took about three quarters of the country's oil output with it when it seceded, hitting a vital source of foreign currency and fuelling inflation in the northern country.
The two sides are now embroiled in a row over how much South Sudan should pay to export oil using pipelines and facilities in the north. South Sudan shut down its oil output last month after Khartoum started seizing some crude to make up for what it called unpaid fees.
The status of southerners in Sudan is also contentious. Sudan has imposed an April deadline for an estimated 500,000 South Sudanese to choose whether they will return home or regularise their stay in Sudan as foreigners.
The deadline "will represent a massive logistical challenge to both governments and to the international community", the International Organisation for Migration said on Tuesday.
Some 2 million people died in the civil war between north and south, fought over ideology, ethnicity, religion and oil.
(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Writing by Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Alison Williams)
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