Fighting in western Sudan continues, wounded civilians crossing border into Chad
TINE, Chad, Jan 26, 2004 (AP) — Sudanese planes dropped bombs in western Sudan on Monday, sending hundreds of civilians across the border into Chad where aid workers scrambled to set up camps to provide them food and shelter in the barren desert.
Loud explosions echoed across the desert frontier between Chad and Sudan, and terrified refugees described how government planes bombed their homes and Arab militia raided their villages.
“It is terrible, they are slaughtering us,” schoolteacher Ishmael Haggar, 30, said in broken English. “ I need to tell somebody.”
Haggar, standing outside a hospital set up by Medecins sans Frontieres, described how the planes targeted the brick homes in his village, Musbad, which is 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the border with Chad. A bomb fell on his home Friday, killing his grandmother instantly when a wall fell on her.
Haggar pulled his 13-year-old brother from the rubble and took him to a neighbors house, but the boy died three hours later. After that, government militia stormed the village, killing anyone who resisted them before looting houses, he said.
He said he and a neighbor took a camel and fled across the border, joining more than 12,000 other Sudanese refugees in Tine, 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) from Chad’s capital, N’Djamena. the refugees crowd the dusty streets
The U.N. refugee agency estimates that more than 95,000 Sudanese have crossed the border at several different areas in the last six weeks, creating several makeshift camps of hungry and thirsty people in southeast Chad. Aid agencies have begun setting up formal camps at several locations in the desert, but finding sources of water has been especially difficult, workers said.
At the hospital run by Medecins sans Frontieres, also known as Doctors without Borders, doctors have treated 60 refugees with shrapnel wounds and 35 remain in serious condition, badly mangled by the large explosives, doctors said.
The refugees accuse government forces of practicing a scorched earth policy in fighting the insurgency in western Darfur state. Government officials have denied the allegation.
While peace talks have reached their final stages to end the 20-year civil war between the Islamic government and the main southern rebel group, a smaller insurgency in Darfur has worsened in recent months.
Government officials last week claimed victory over the Darfur rebels in the state-run media and First Vice President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha issued a statement Friday claiming to have met one of the Darfur rebel leaders to begin peace talks.
Along the Chad-Sudan border, though, refugees said the government attacks on civilian villages continue, both from the air and the ground.