Wounded flow into Chad despite truce in west Sudan
By Nick Tattersall
IRIBA, Chad, (Reuters) – Wounded and exhausted refugees were still limping into Chad this weekend fleeing Sudan’s western Darfur region despite rebel and government assurances that a recently agreed ceasefire was holding.
The mostly black African refugees who have been coming over the border for months, have said they are fleeing systematic attacks by horse-riding Arab militia and government bombers wreaking destruction on their homes and villages. Medics say the wounds of many refugees become infected after trekking for days in this arid, remote corner of Africa and it was not clear when the latest arrivals began their journey.
Just making it over the border is not enough. It can take several days before the mostly black African women, children and elderly men are able to see a doctor.
“We are still seeing people coming with shrapnel and bullet wounds,” said Jean de Cambry, emergency co-ordinator at Medecins Sans Frontieres, which has just moved its 30-bed field hospital away from the border town of Tine because it was too dangerous.
He said around 45 people with gunshot wounds and burns arrived in another frontier town, Bahai, a week ago.
Some 110,000 refugees are scattered along the barren border between the two countries and more keep coming every day, fleeing a war which U.N. officials have called ethnic cleansing.
Rebel officials and the Khartoum-based government said a truce, which began on Sunday, appeared to be holding. The government said there has been no fighting for 10 days.
One rebel commander said on Monday the Sudanese government had attacked two villages shortly before the ceasefire began — an accusation denied by Khartoum.
TALES OF TERROR
Aside from the testimonies of the refugees who make it to Chad, little is known about the violence in Darfur. Access from over the border is too dangerous for aid workers, and the Sudanese government is keen to minimise press coverage.
Crouched around a tent in the dusty refugee camp at Touloum, 50 km (31 miles) from the border, a group of old men in white robes told tales of systematic attacks in recent months.
They said Arab “Janjaweed” militia on horses or camels came to their farming villages at dawn with rifles and grenades, opened fire, stole their animals and burned their homes.
They said they had been bombed by government planes which dropped drums filled with nails or shards of metal and strafed by helicopter gunships seeking rebels.
De Cambry said some of the wounded treated by Medecins Sans Frontiers had 40-millimetre nails stuck in their bodies.
“Young girls are whipped and raped. They kill the boys over 10,” said Bichara Ali Diar, scratching a pattern in the sand with his finger as he spoke. “There are piles of bodies outside in the open air. Nobody has been able to bury them.”
The truce has done little to mitigate the concerns of aid workers who have described the conflict in western Darfur as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and compared it in manner, if not scale, to the Rwandan genocide a decade ago.
“Our biggest worry are the people at the border who have nothing to eat. In addition there is the risk of Antonovs (the government’s Russian-made planes) circling and of unexploded mines,” said Emile Belem, who heads the U.N. refugee agency office in Iriba, a small town an hour from the border.
Some of the new arrivals at Touloum, which already hosts close to 6,000 people, sheltered from the scorching sun under bits of plastic sheeting fastened over brittle branches because there are not enough tents to go round.
“People are still fleeing. They have lost all their family, everything they built up,” Ali Diar said, as other refugees emerged from their tents to listen.