Water and food lacking for people living behind rebel lines - NGOs

People living in rebel-held areas of the western Sudanese region of Darfur face serious shortages of water and food, after militias smashed most of their water wells and burnt both their food and seeds, NGO workers said. Dan Eiffe, the director of the Sudan Development Trust, and Oedvar Vjorkness, the country director of Norwegian People's Aid, told a news conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Friday that villagers in the Jabal Marrah area had said that Janjawid militias had thrown dead bodies into some open water wells. The militias were also continuing to commit widespread abuses against civilians, including killings, gang-rape, and burning homesteads and granaries, they added. Eiffe and Vjorkness flew into the rebel-held areas on 26 and 27 June. They said humanitarian organisations were still being denied access to the most-affected areas, despite a public statement by Khartoum that it had eased access for aid workers into the region. According to the NGO workers, their aircraft was nearly shot down by government troops who suspected it to be carrying rebels. They quoted villagers as saying that they had nothing to plant during the coming current rainy season because the attackers had not only looted all their food but also burned their seeds. The few civilians left in the area - once home to about 1.5 million people - now depended on meat from their surviving donkeys and cattle. Eiffe said they had talked to a woman who claimed to have been gang-raped by the Janjawid in the presence of a government soldier. Other survivors had testified that the raiders had also set their mosque on fire, killing their imam and six others. During the news conference, the NGO workers played a video in which school children explained how their female teachers had been raped and their male teachers killed as the children looked on. The Sudanese Liberation Army and the Freedom and Justice Movement, took up arms against the government, claiming to defend the rights of non-Arab communities and struggle for their greater recognition. To counter the rebels, the government armed militias like the Janjawid and deployed them to help the army. The militias have, however, been accused of gross human rights abuses across the region, but the government denies encouraging them to commit such acts.