Relief workers swept up in surging Darfur violence
By Sudarsan Raghavan, Knight Ridder Newspapers
EL FASHER, Sudan, Nov 23, 2004 (KRT) — Fleeing aid workers told harrowing tales Tuesday of firefights and aerial bombings after Sudanese rebels took control of the strategic town of Tawilla.
“We walked all night on foot to reach here,” Noor, a tall, gaunt Sudanese, said after he arrived in this northern Darfur town, about 40 miles from Tawilla. “We were terrified.”
Increasingly, humanitarian workers are getting caught in the cross hairs of the Darfur region’s civil war, which has taken an estimated 70,000 lives and uprooted 1.6 million. In recent weeks, two aid workers from the charity Save the Children UK died in a land mine explosion. Others were held hostage or their vehicles were shot at.
On Monday, 45 Sudanese aid workers were airlifted to safety by African Union peacekeepers after they’d huddled in a house for hours while bombs dropped and bullets flew in every direction. Four bombs fell near a feeding center run by Save the Children UK, where many of the aid workers worked, said Libby Kennard, a spokesperson. No one was injured.
“Some women were crying,” recalled Ali, an aid worker. He, Noor and another worker, Bashar, who don’t work for Save the Children, asked that neither their full names nor the name of their relief agency be published because they plan to return to Tawilla when it becomes safe again.
“I asked God to protect us all,” said Bashar, who said he spent his hours in the house flat against the floor. Sudanese officials on Tuesday denied that government planes had bombed Tawilla – which would be a clear violation of a no-fly zone security agreement it had signed with the rebels less than two weeks ago in Abuja, Nigeria. “There are clear instructions to the army that they should not use any bombing. There is no bombing,” Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said in Khartoum, the capital.
Officials of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army said government bombers continued to pound some areas of Tawilla, a town of 55,000, 30,000 of whom live in a crowded refugee camp.
“There was no fighting, but there were bombings in and around Tawilla,” said Abdou Ismail, a rebel official assigned to the African Union cease-fire commission.
The reports couldn’t be independently confirmed. He said rebels seized the town in retaliation for a militia attack on a black African village in which eight people were killed.
A rebel spokesman said they were bracing for another government counterattack. The government clearly was jolted by the rebels’ seizure of the town, which straddles the main supply route to government forces based in western Sudan near the Chad border. More than 25 people, including 22 policemen, were killed in the attack, the government said.
On Tuesday, olive-green military trucks filled with soldiers and arms drove through the streets of El Fasher, the administrative center of North Darfur. Others were seen heading in the direction of Tawilla.
Local officials declared a state of emergency and imposed a 10 p.m. curfew, according to the official Al Anba newspaper. Sudan’s government-controlled news agency quoted the region’s governor, Usman Kibir, as calling for freedom fighters and ordinary citizens “to join the ranks of the Jihad (Holy War) for defending the homeland.”
Ali, who’s been volunteering for six months in Tawilla, said he woke up Monday to sounds of gunfire as rebels swept the town.
For 55 minutes he huddled in his house near the feeding center, until the bullets stopped. Then he and thousands of others rushed outside, fleeing in every direction.
“The majority took nothing, while others carried whatever valuables they could carry: clothes, food for a couple of days,” Ali recalled. “Some lost their children and came back to find them.”
Ali and Bashar were together when a group of rebels stopped them. The rebels already had stolen Ali’s agency vehicle, and wanted Bashar to drive it. But he couldn’t drive. So they hit him on the head with the butt of a gun and left, Bashar said, showing his bandaged head.
Ali and Bashar made their way to the Save the Children compound, where they joined 51 other terrified aid workers. They thought they’d be safe. But in the afternoon, the bombing began, aid workers said.
It lasted for two hours. Eight workers decided to take their chances, and fled into the forest. The other 45 remained. When the bombing stopped, they called for help on a satellite phone.
The African Union sent three helicopters to evacuate them. The workers rushed out of the house during a lull in the violence.
Other aid workers walked to El Fasher or hitched rides with relief trucks.
“I’ve had no food since yesterday. I am so tired,” said worker Halima Ahmed.
It was unclear whether aid workers were among those killed in the fighting. Six were still missing late Tuesday.