10,000 Eritrean refugees cross into Sudan in 24 hours

A UNHCR statement on Tuesday said an estimated 10,000 Eritrean refugees had crossed the border into Sudan’s Kassala state in the past 24 hours. UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said most of the new arrivals were women and children, who were exhausted and badly in need of water and food. They were pouring across the border in trucks, tractors, donkey carts and on foot. Their condition was significantly worse that that of previous arrivals, indicating that they had been displaced for some time. The UNHCR was supplying the latest wave of refugees with tents, jerrycans and soap. They were being taken to camps at Amarmousa, two km from the Lasa border point, where some 18,000 earlier refugees from the latest fighting had been given shelter. The refugees were refusing to go further into Sudan and did not want any permanent settlement.

The latest arrivals bring the total numbers of refugees in Sudan since the start of the Ethiopian offensive on 12 May to about 40,000. Paul Stromberg, UNHCR spokesman in Khartoum, told IRIN on Wednesday that the numbers crossing the border had now dwindled to a trickle, but that there were pockets along the road south from Tesseney towards the Ethiopian border where groups of up to 10,000 displaced had congregated close to water supplies and were waiting to decide whether to move across the border. If the Ethiopians should advance south of Tesseney - the most direct route of withdrawal - there could be a new surge of refugees into Sudan.