UNCHR, WFP airlift aid for Sudan refugees in Chad

GENEVA, Feb 17 (Reuters) – The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said on Tuesday it was mounting an emergency airlift to bring relief supplies to some 110,000 people in Chad who have fled fighting in Sudan’s southwest Darfur region.

UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said the refugees were spread along a 600-km (370-mile) stretch of border territory, where they were subject to attacks by “bandits and militias” from inside Sudan.

In an initial flight at the weekend, plastic sheeting, transportable warehouses and four-wheel drive vehicles were flown in from the agency’s stockpiles in Copenhagen. From Tuesday, daily flights would begin from Mwanza in Tanzania.

Inside Sudan, the U.N. World Food Programme said it had begun airlifting 500 tonnes of sorghum to tens of thousands of people displaced in parts of the Darfur region and where roads where too insecure to send food by land.

The WFP said the food would be flown to al-Fashir, about 800 km (500 miles) southwest of Khartoum, as insecurity prevents transporting by land food from WFP’s main warehouses el-Obeid, in neighbouring Northern Kordofan state.

It said some food was being taken by road to other areas.

Redmond said UNHCR had so far moved some 4,000 refugees from Darfur — where rebels are fighting Sudanese government forces — to camps deeper inside Chad, in an operation it must complete before rains begin in the coming weeks.

“We still have a long way to go in this race against time and the elements,” he told a news briefing.

Many of the refugees were being fed by relatives on the Chad side of the border and others by Chadian relief workers. But UNHCR representatives on the spot said they had seen cases of malnutrition among children.

“The fragile situation of the refugees shows that the resources of the local population to help them are reaching their limits,” he added. Although some people had fled into Chad with their cattle, many of these were dying from lack of fodder.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said last week that the government had regained full control of Darfur and has said it was opening aid “corridors” to assist the flow of aid.

Rebels, who took up arms in February last year, dispute the government’s claim to have control and have said they will continue fighting until the government shares out the resources of Africa’s largest country more equally.