WFP says 300,000 cut off from aid in Sudan’s Darfur

NEW YORK, Nov 26, 2004 (PANA) — The World Food Programme (WFP) said Friday the security situation in Sudan’s troubled western Darfur region was deteriorating rapidly with 300,000
displaced people cut off from all aid following a rebel
attack earlier this week in breach of ceasefire accords
signed with the government.

A girl watches as her mother grinds cereal with a pestle at Abushouk camp near El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, November 21, 2004. (Reuters).

WFP spokesman Simon Pluess, told reporters in Geneva, the
UN agency and other humanitarian organisations had flown their
staff out of North Darfur after the rebel attack on Tawila
and an air raid in which a bomb fell some 50 metres from the
nutritional centre of one humanitarian agency.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative for
Sudan Jan Pronk, has also called on all sides to immediately
halt hostilities in what the UN has termed the world’s worst
humanitarian crisis.

Nearly 1.7 million people have been displaced in Darfur, with
the Arab Janjaweed militias accused of killing and raping
thousands of villagers after rebels took up arms last year
to demand a greater share of economic resources from the
Khartoum government.

“The parties have to understand that neither the AU (African
Union) nor the international community are prepared to
sustain a process based on empty promises,” Pronk warned.

“The forthcoming days will be the test of their seriousness.
If they fail to live up to their commitments, they have to
realise that they will be held accountable by the AU Peace
and Security Council and the United Nations’ Security
Council,” he added.

While welcoming a reiteration Thursday by government and rebel
officials at a meeting in N’djamena, capital of neighbouring
Chad, to abide by the ceasefire accords signed in April and
earlier this month, Pronk urged all sides “to see that this
commitment is translated into concrete action on the ground
by immediately halting hostilities.”

It was the latest in a series of appeals by Pronk since the
rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) seized the town of Tawila
in North Darfur 22 November in what he called a clear violation
of the accords.

The UN envoy reiterated his call on the government to exercise
maximum restraint and refrain from air raids in countering the
rebel attacks.

“The recent attacks by the SLA on Tawila and Kalma camp were
acts of revenge for grievances pre-dating the Abuja Agreements,”
he said, referring to the humanitarian and security accords
signed in the Nigerian capital earlier this month in an effort
to set the April ceasefire agreement signed in N’djamena back
on track.

Pronk said the Abuja Accords were meant to be a fresh start.

Pluess said there were also reports of attacks by Janjaweed
in West Darfur and by rebel groups, although despite the
insecurity, the WFP had managed to distribute 12,000 tons
of food at its distribution points to feed another 600,000
people.