First food aid for Darfur refugees

Refugees from the Darfur region of western Sudan who have fled from government bombing and militia attacks into eastern Chad are to receive food aid for the first time next week. The World Food Programmed (WFP) is to fly 13 t of high-energy biscuits to the Chadian capital, N'Djamena, on Friday night, after which food will be trucked to eastern Chad, a two-day drive away. WFP planned to pre-position food for the over 110,000 refugees encamped on the Chadian side of the 1,000-km border with Sudan before the onset of the rainy season in June when transport would become impossible, a WFP spokeswoman, Lara Melo, told IRIN. Since the refugees began arriving in July, local people - who had a good harvest this year, unlike their neighbours in Darfur - have been supporting their kinsmen single-handedly with food and, in some cases, shelter. In addition to food, WFP is also to provide aid agencies operating in eastern Chad (where road infrastructure is extremely poor) with a special passenger and cargo air service. Meanwhile, within Darfur there have been reports of renewed fighting between rebels and the army, despite claims this week by the government that the war is over. A humanitarian source told IRIN that rebels had attacked a local administrative council building in the town of Dar al-Salam, about 30 km from Al-Fashir, early on Thursday morning. They had stolen 3 million Sudanese dinars (about US $11,600) that had been delivered to pay local salaries, he said. They had also attacked a hospital, injuring some of its patients and stealing some government vehicles. On Wednesday, rebels had also stolen cooking oil from a commercial vehicle on the road between Al-Fashir and Nyala, thereby prompting local authorities to close the road. A spokesman for the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), Abu Bakr Hamid al-Nur, told IRIN that the rebels had "defeated" government forces in four places in the last three days, including Dar al-Salam, all located within an 80-km radius of Al-Fashir. He said that Darfur's two rebel groups, JEM and the Sudan Liberation Army, now fighting in tandem, currently controlled most of Darfur's rural areas and key roads between the region's main towns, Al-Fashir, Nyala and Junaynah. In Al-Fashir, rebels also claim to have shot down two helicopters on Thursday. Meanwhile, conflicting messages have emerged from the region's rebels and the Sudanese government over the last few days, with both sides desperate to prove they are in control. The claims are impossible to verify. In a separate development, the Sudanese Ministry for Humanitarian Affairs has said it has opened "corridors" for aid workers to operate in. A statement said Ambro, Al-Fashir, Junaynah, Kurni, Kulbus, Kutum, Murnei, Tine and Zalingei and their environs were now accessible. United Nations officials are due to verify this over the weekend. There have been blanket denials of aid to rebel areas for several months, and regular travel bans imposed to government-held areas through lack of permits supplied by Khartoum. Since peace talks broke down between the government and the SLA in mid-December, general insecurity and a breakdown of law and order have also prevented the few agencies already operating in Darfur from doing so effectively. Currently, only about 15 percent of people in Defer are in areas accessible to aid workers. Half of Darfur's 6 million people are directly affected by the conflict. The number of people who have fled from Darfur to Chad has nearly doubled to 110,000 in the past three months. More than 700,000 people have been internally displaced in the past year.