Food, aid being shipped to refugees from war-torn Sudan region
GENEVA, Feb 18 (AFP) — Humanitarian organizations are shipping food and emergency aid to tens of thousands of refugees from Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region, the UN’s World Food Programme said.
On Tuesday a first planeload of WFP food arrived at El Fasher where 500 tonnes of foodstuffs are due to arrive, the UN agency said in a statement here.
“This is intended to meet the urgent needs of people we have been unable to reach for several months” because of security scares, said Bradley Guerrant, the WFP’s deputy country director for Sudan.
But he added: “We are not planning a massive airlift to the region, since we hope that road transportation will be re-established very soon.”
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has also started ferrying aid by plane to 110,000 Sudanese refugees living along the border with Chad, said Ron Redmond, a UNHCR spokesman.
The operation began last weekend and a cargo plane was expected to fly the route between Mwanza, Tanzania and Abeche, Chad every day.
A total seven flights have been scheduled this week to deliver 256 tonnes of emergency aid including blankets, kitchen utensils and other equipment.
The UNHCR has tried for a month to transfer thousands of Sudanese refugees from Darfur to safe camps inside Chad.
So far, 4,000 refugees have been taken to two transit camps, said Redmond. “Obviously we have still got a long way to go in this race against time and the elements” before the start of the rainy season in May.
About 3,000 people have been killed and another 670,000 displaced within Sudan itself by the war between government troops and their Arab militia allies and rebels drawn mainly from Darfur’s non-Arab minorities.
About 100,000 Sudanese are estimated to have fled across the border into Chad because of the rebellion that erupted a year ago over the Darfur region’s alleged economic neglect by the government.
The rebels say the government oppresses black Africans in favour of Arabs.
The widening conflict in the west of the country comes as Sudan’s civil war inches towards a peaceful conclusion at talks in Kenya.
The Khartoum government and Sudan’s main rebel group on Tuesday resumed peace talks there aimed at ending 21 years of conflict that pitted the south, where most observe traditional African religions and Christianity, against the Muslim, Arabized north.