Fears of new refugee influx from Eritrea-Ethiopia fighting

Sudan has called for international aid to deal with an expected new wave of refugees from the fighting between Eritrea and Ethiopia, a Sudanese newspaper reported on Thursday. Al-Ayam said that Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid, governor of Kassala state, which is on the Eritrean border, had appealed to the UNHCR to take emergency measures to deal with the problem. It quoted Hamid as saying that the state did not have sufficient resources to provide food and shelter for the potential influx and asked for international aid organisations to make preparations to receive the refugees. A UNHCR spokesman told IRIN he was not aware of any new influx of refugees into Sudan as a result of the fighting.

Before the latest fighting, there were some 160,000 Eritrean refugees in Sudan, most of them in Kassala state. The majority had been there since before 1991, when Eritrea won its independence. Last month, UNHCR signed an agreement with the governments of Sudan and Eritrea for the planned repatriation of some of these refugees. The plan had provided for the return of 10,000 to 15,000 people by September.