Kassala expecting more Eritrean refugees

The governor of Kassala, Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid, said on Monday that 25,000 Eritreans had crossed the border into the eastern Sudanese state to escape the latest fighting, and warned that the numbers could swell to 200,000. Kassala state authorities had already distributed all its stocks of food and medicines to the refugees, AFP quoted Hamid as saying. International agencies estimated at the weekend that up to 20,000 refugees had crossed into Sudan, joining some 160,000 Eritreans already in the country, most of them since Eritrea’s war of independence. The WFP reported over the weekend that thousands of refugees were streaming across the border in trucks, by donkey and on foot. The agency said that 4,250 tonnes of food supplies, originally destined for use in a programme to repatriate Eritrean refugees in Sudan but which has been put on hold as a result of the renewed fighting, would now be distributed among the latest arrivals.