Civilians dying behind rebel lines in Sudan’s Darfur: aid group

NAIROBI, July 2 (AFP) — Civilians are dying because of starvation and militia attacks in villages behind rebel lines in the war-ravaged western Sudanese region of Darfur, an aid agency said in Nairobi on Friday.

“No (other) aid group has ever visited these people because of the insecurity. They do not have food or seeds to plant in this wet season,” Norwegian People’s Aid Director for Sudan Oddvar Bjorknes told a news conference.

“There are several orphans left behind because parents were killed by the (Khartoum-backed Janjawid) militia,” said Bjorknes, who had just returned from Darfur.

“The villagers said they have just decided to wait and die since nobody was going there to help them,” he added.

“Some people said that the rebels attacked them and told them that they were slaves,” said Dan Eiffe, the director of Sudan Development Trust, who accompanied the aid workers to the area.

“They killed people mercilessly and raped women. A few children survived because they escaped and hid in nearby hills,” Eiffe said, adding that the situation in Darfur is one of the worst in Africa.

The aid group showed pictures and a 10-minute video-clip of orphaned children, graves where dead were buried in the sand, burnt-out villages and a well, intentionally destroyed by the militia.

At least 10,000 people have died and more than a million been driven from their homes in Darfur since an uprising against the Khartoum government broke out in February 2003.

In retaliation, government forces and the Janjawid carried out what various officials describe as a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing and forced starvation.