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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
SUDAN: Aid workers take flight from Darfur town as fighting erupts
NAIROBI, 23 Nov 2004 (IRIN) - The humanitarian agency Save the Children said on Monday that its staff had been forced to flee the town of Tawilla in the troubled Darfur region of western Sudan when fighting broke out between government forces and rebels, despite an existing ceasefire agreement.
"Both sides have demonstrated utter disregard for the ceasefire," Toby Porter, director of emergencies at Save the Children said in statement issued by the agency. "Yet again, innocent civilians, particularly women and children, are suffering at the hands of the rebels and their own government, and still the international community fails to protect them."
Tawillah in North Darfur state is home to more than 30,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have sought refuge there because of fear of being attacked by militias, locally known as the Janjawid and who are said to be backed by the government.
The statement said that an aerial attack by the government, including one bomb which landed 50 mt from a Save the Children UK feeding centre, forced more than 30 of its staff to flee into the desert. African Union helicopters were used to evacuate the Save the Children staff to safety.
Indigenous communities in Darfur took up arms in February 2003, accusing Khartoum of decades of neglect and oppression. In its efforts to pacify the region, President Omar El-Bashir's government is widely believed to have backed the Janjawid, an Arab militia accused of committing atrocities against unarmed civilians.
Many violations of the ceasefire signed in April between the government and the two rebels groups - the SLA and the Justice and Equity Movement (JEM) - have been reported, and humanitarian organisations have said the violations continued to hamper aid delivery to people displaced by the conflict.
The struggle has forced more than 1.5 million people to flee their homes, while more than 70,000 have died from the sickness and malnutrition it has caused. An unknown number of people have died as a direct result of the fighting itself.
Monday's fighting broke out three days after the UN Security Council, which met in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on 18 and 19 November, adopted a resolution demanding that the government, rebel forces and other armed groups in Darfur cease all violence and ensure that their members comply with international humanitarian law.
In a related development, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has said that reports of violence against women and children in and around IDP camps in Darfur appeared to be on the increase.
UNICEF's Executive Director Carol Bellamy said in New York last week that reports by aid-agency monitors "strongly dispute claims that the situation is under control".
She said aid agencies in Darfur have expressed dismay at the increasing number of people arriving in the camps, as well as a surge in violent incidents in and around the camps themselves.
A UNICEF statement said armed militias were raping girls and women in Darfur as a tactic to terrorise and humiliate individuals as well as families and communities.
"The only party capable of securing the lives of these people is the government itself," said Bellamy. "For as long as we continue to hear of the violence and insecurity faced by Sudanese children, we will continue to call for those responsible to be brought to account for their actions," she added.
UNICEF also lamented that children had, in a series of incidents, been loaded on to lorries and transported to a new camp without their parents, while others had been injured during government attempts to relocate people from camps.
[ENDS]
This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004
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