Refugees say militia burning and looting their way through Darfur: UN
GENEVA, Jan 9 (AFP) — Sudanese refugees fleeing to Chad have told aid workers that militia groups are continuing to burn and loot villages in western Sudan’s Darfur region, the UN refugee agency said Friday.
About 95,000 Sudanese have fled over the border to Chad since April last year and hundreds of thousands more are thought to have been forced out of their homes in Darfur, according to a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Thirty thousand of the refugees arrived in eastern Chad last month and the UNHCR says it expects to find more Sudanese as emergency teams continue to move along the border over the next week.
“Newly arrived Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad report that marauding militia groups are continuing to burn, loot and empty entire villages in the Darfur region of western Sudan,” UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond.
He did not touch upon the sensitive issue of the relationship between Khartoum and the militia, known as Janjaweed, which Dafur administrators allege are armed by the government to fight local rebel groups.
“The descriptions that we got are that they are Arab militia,” he added.
One refugee also told UNHCR that the attacks were increasing, Redmond added.
He said there were also reports of rape and abduction of women and girls by militia, and some of those fleeing recently alleged that “ethnic cleansing” was taking place.
“These reports cannot be confirmed as humanitarian agencies are not able to work in Darfur,” Redmond said. But the UN regarded the overall picture as credible.
“Generally when we have consistent accounts from refugees we have to give them some credence,” he said.
The refugees independently gave similar accounts of pattern to the attacks, with militia starting to attack villages by shooting people in streets early in the morning, Redmond said.
They then raid and loot houses, stealing livestock.
Since the beginning of the Darfur rebellion, which was launched by local groups in February 2003 to protest against alleged government neglect, some 3,000 people have been killed, according to UN estimates.