Hundreds flee as Sudan fighting continues
TINE, Chad, Jan 26, 2004 (AP) — Sudanese planes dropped bombs in western Sudan on Monday, sending hundreds of people fleeing across the border into Chad where aid workers scrambled to provide them food and shelter in the barren desert.
Loud explosions echoed across the frontier as terrified refugees told of government planes bombing their homes and an Arab militia raiding their villages earlier in the day.
Some watched later as a small plane circled over this border town and dropped a bomb on the Sudanese side. The explosion sent a plume of smoke and dust into the air.
“It is terrible, they are slaughtering us,” schoolteacher Ishmael Haggar, 30, said in broken English. “I need to tell somebody.”
While peace talks have reached their final stages to end Sudan’s 20-year civil war between the Islamic government and the main southern rebel group, a smaller insurgency in Darfur, along the border with Chad, has worsened in recent months.
Refugees, however, said there were no rebels in the town and accused Sudanese forces of attacking civilians as they fled to Chad. Aid workers and journalists have been denied permission to cross the border to investigate. Government officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
Haggar, standing outside a hospital set up by Medecins sans Frontieres, said planes targeted the brick homes in his village, Musbad, 15 miles from the border with Chad.
The hospital’s doctors said they had treated 60 refugees with shrapnel wounds, and 35 remained in serious condition. One man lost his right leg.
A bomb fell on Haggar’s home Friday, killing his grandmother instantly when a wall fell on her. His 13-year-old brother who was pulled from the rubble, died hours later. After that, government militia stormed the village, killing anyone who resisted them before looting houses, he said.
Haggar and a neighbor took a camel and fled across the border, joining more than 12,000 other Sudanese refugees around Tine. The Sudanese crowd the dusty streets as refugees rush to the hospital with the wounded.
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. Aid agencies have begun setting up camps in the desert, but finding sources of water has been difficult.
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.