U. N. moving Sudanese refugees to safer locations deeper inside Chad

NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 03, 2004 (AP) — More than 4,300 Sudanese refugees in a Chadian border town bombed last week by Sudanese forces will be moved to safer areas deeper inside Chad, the United Nations said Tuesday.

Fighting in western Sudan between Sudanese forces and rebels has spilled over into Chad on a number of occasions, and the planned relocation of refugees in Tine is part of a larger U.N. effort to move civilians who have fled fighting in neighboring Sudan away from the border.

Already, the United Nations has managed to move about 1,400 Sudanese refugees who were sheltering near other border towns, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, said in a statement.

Now, UNHCR is working with the Chadian government to relocate the refugees in Tine, which is split between Chad and Sudan, further west to Iriba and Guerada , U.N. officials said. The move came after Sudanese forces bombed the Chadian side of Tine on Jan. 29, killing two people, as they successfully fought rebels for control of the Sudanese half of the town.

Peace talks have reached their final stages to end the 21-year civil war between the Sudanese government and rebels in the south of Africa’s largest nation. But a smaller insurgency in the western Darfur region that borders Chad has worsened in recent months after it erupted a year ago.

The rebels and refugees accuse the government in Khartoum of deliberately bombing villages in Darfur and using militias to loot towns and villages, allegations the government denies.

In a report released Tuesday, Amnesty International condemned the attacks on civilians in Darfur and called on the Sudanese government to let humanitarian monitors assess the situation in the isolated region.

The government in Khartoum has restricted access of relief agencies to the region.

“The majority of casualties in the Darfur war are civilians,” the London-based human rights groups said. “The extent of the destruction of lives and livelihoods in Darfur since the conflict started is alarming … hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians have been killed in deliberate or indiscriminate attacks.”

UNHCR estimates there are some 113,000 Sudanese refugees inside Chad, and in Tuesday’s statement, the organization said it was beefing up its presence in the central African country to handle the situation.

Aid groups say the violence has forced more than 600,000 people to flee their homes, mostly to other parts of Sudan