UN refugee agency alarmed by Darfur scorched earth campaign

GENEVA, April 26 (AFP) — The UN refugee agency said it is alarmed by what appears to be a renewed scorched earth campaign by pro-government militias in Sudan’s Darfur region.

A displaced Sudanese man looks at his burnt-down house after militiamen burnt the Sereaf village, southwest of Al Genenia, in west Darfur along the Sudan Chad border, April 22, 2005. (Reuters).

“The burning of villages seems to have resumed,” Jennifer Pagonis, spokeswoman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told journalists.

In October and November last year, some 55 villages were torched after earlier being abandoned by their residents in the face of attacks by government-allied Janjaweed militia.

Staff from the UNHCR last week visited a settlement near Masteri in western Darfur which exiled villagers said had been burned earlier this month, said Pagonis.

“This gratuitous act is clearly a message to the former residents not to return home,” she said.

“We are concerned because acts like this — on top of the displacement of some two million people from their homes — threaten to change the social and demographic structure of Darfur irrevocably.”

Relief agencies say that killings and rapes are still taking place in Darfur, a region the size of France where a small contingent of African Union monitors has struggled to restore security.

According to some estimates, as many as 300,000 people have died in Darfur since an uprising by local rebel groups in early 2003 sparked a savage crackdown by the government.

Sudanese authorities have been urging people who fled the conflict to return home.