04/24/2006

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Below is an excerpt of an article from IRINnews.org:

NDJAMENA (IRIN) - Hunger and militia attacks in the remote border areas of eastern Chad have driven more than 11,000 Chadians to seek international assistance and stretched resources meant for Sudanese refugees, according to aid agencies.

According to the UN an estimated 50,000 Chadians are displaced in eastern Chad, but until a recent wave of attacks on the government of President Idriss Deby by rebel forces nearly all the internally displaced people (IDP) had managed on assistance from friends and family.

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"Conditions are not ideal. Water capacity is especially difficult as demand has exceeded supply so we're having trouble pumping enough to meet everyone's needs. There's an urgent need to get these people located elsewhere," said Conway.

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"Since late 2005 there has been a surge of attacks across the border and this has caused some of the displacement," said Karim Khalil of the NGO Care International by telephone from Abeche, a major town in eastern Chad.

As rebel fighters swept through the east bound for the capital N'djamena, aid agencies reported truck-loads of Chadians arriving at refugee camps reporting attacks on their towns by armed militia groups.

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"People have been moving more or less steadily from the border area over to more central areas for several weeks now, and they are moving because they believe they will get assistance there," said the head of the ICRC delegation Thomas Merkelbach.

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The World Food Programme (WFP) leads feeding programmes throughout eastern Chad for some quarter of a million refugees from Sudan and Central African Republic. But WFP spokesman Marcus Prior warned that that number could rise as local resources dwindle and Chadians turn to food aid, too.

"Despite serious fighting in the region between the Chadian army and militias since late 2005, most people are still able to live with their families, and there is still food around from the harvest, but that situation will deteriorate as we move into the hunger season when food supplies normally run out. We are very concerned about these people," Prior said.

The American NGO Refugees International warned in a report issued in early April, before the latest round of fighting, that many Chadians forced out of their villages by rebels and militia groups remained out of sight close to the Sudanese border, living off already impoverished relatives and neighbours, and that UN agencies "have not been prepared to intervene in the growing IDP situation."