18,000 more refugees from Darfur flood into Chad

A further 18,000 Sudanese refugees flooded into eastern Chad over the past week following further heavy fighting in Sudan's western Darfur region, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday. UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski told a press briefing in Geneva that the latest influx of frightened people had poured across the border following attacks on 10 villages in the canton of Djerbira by government forces on 16 January . Janowski said the refugees had fled the shooting with little or no belongings, some on foot and some on donkeys. He quoted them as saying the troops who attacked their villages had burned houses and dynamited wells, provoking an exodus of villagers across the border. Janowski said most of the new arrivals were now camped in the open in the harsh semi-desert of eastern Chad, with little in the way of food, water or shelter, exposed to the hot sun by day and temperatures that dropped to near freezing at night. Their arrival brings to well over 110,000 the number of refugees who have flooded into Chad since two rebel groups seeking autonomy for Darfur launched a guerrilla war against the Sudanese government early last year. Nearly half these people have arrived in the past two months. Janowski said UNHCR teams were urgently assessing the needs of the latest arrivals who were spread out in groups along a 300 km stretch of the Sudanese border. The largest group of about 4,000 people was camped in a field near Guereda, a small town 150 km northeast of Abeche, the main town in eastern Chad, he added. Janowski said UNHCR was pre-positioning blankets, jerry cans and food in Guereda. The UN World Food Programme (WFP)planned to start distributing sorghum white beans and corn soya blend from there at the beginning of next week, he added. Relief agencies have only recently stepped in help out with this hidden crisis in one of the most remote and inaccessible corners of Africa. On January 15, UNHCR opened its first official refugee camp at Farchana, 55 km east of the border town Adre.It is designed to eventually hold 9,000 to 12,000 people. “So far, 621 people have been transferred in the first three relocation movements last Saturday, Monday and Wednesday”, Janowski said. On each trip, about 250 people were relocated to Farchana after a three-hour along trip in trucks tavelling on dirt roads. Helene Caux, UNHCR’s spokesperson in eastern Chad, said earlier this week that each relocated familiy would be allocated a plot of land, 15 days of food rations and a relief package containing supplies like blankets, soap and mosquito nets. Caux told IRIN by satellite phone on Wednesday that UNHCR ultimately aimed to transport 300 people per day to Farchana. She said two other sites for refugee camps in eastern Chad had been selected to host 20,000 and 8,000 people respectively. UNHCR was also negotiating with the Chadian authorities to identify more safer sites, at least 50 km away from the volatile border, Caux added. Although international aid has been slow to arrive, many of the refugees from Darfur belong to ethnic groups such as Fur, Zaghawa and Massalit, who also live on the Chadian side of the border. They have therefore benefited from a warm welcome and considerable generosity from their host communities. Relief agencies have repeatedly quoted refugees as saying that the Sudanese armed forces and their Arab militia allies are systematically forcing farmers off their land and looting and destroying villages. The United Nations estimates that about 600,000 people have been internally displaced within Darfur as a result of the conflict in addition to those who have fled to Chad. Only 15 percent of those internally displaced can currently be reached by humanitarian workers.