Important number of Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees arrive daily to Sudan

August 20, 2009 (KHARTOUM) — Important number of refugees from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia are crossing into Sudan from eastern border, a Sudanese refugee official said on Thursday.

Some one hundred refugees are arriving on daily basis through the eastern Sudan border at Kassala, Humaidat, Al Guergef and Al-Garadrif, the deputy refugee commissioner for eastern Sudan states Mr. Balal Ahmed Moussa told the official SUNA.

Le number of refugees admitted in Al Shejairab camp, Kassala state, during July and the beginning of August has reached 620 families. The number of recently arrived refugees at Al-Shejairab is 11,311 persons, he added.

“The total number of registered refugees at the camp now is 23,218 people” he further said.

Sudan hosts over three hundred refugees most of them from Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Wars in the Horn of Africa, famines and worsening human rights situations have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia to eastern Sudan since 1968.

Aid groups say donors have been less enthusiastic about funding the decades-old humanitarian operation in eastern Sudan, opting to focus more on areas like Darfur, where a four-year-old conflict has displaced some 2.7 million people and where media coverage is more high profile.

(ST)