De flygter i tusindvis over grænsen fra konflikten i det sydlige Sudan. Der er hverken flygtningelejre eller mad nok. Nogle flygtninge må leve af blade fra træerne.
DORO, 14 December 2011 (IRIN) – At least 1,000 refugees are arriving daily in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state, fleeing conflict in Blue Nile state across the border, according to aid agencies.
The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, says more than 23,000 people have been registered at the Doro refugee camp, about 40km from the border with Sudan, and it is planning new sites as thousands more are expected.
“We’re starting up a second site in Jammam [about 65km west of Doro] as Doro is reaching its maximum capacity [of 25,000] and maybe a third when we assess how many people are coming,” said Mireille Girard, UNHCR’s South Sudan representative.
Only a few aid agencies are in Doro to tend to hundreds of refugees arriving with little or nothing, fleeing aerial bombardment in Blue Nile state, where conflict between Sudan government forces and troops formerly loyal to the south is ongoing.
“I ran away from the bombs; when I heard the sound of the Antonov [bomber plane] in our village, I couldn’t even eat, I was so scared, so we ran away,” Baabi Ombasha, 43, said.
Ombasha said she walked and camped out for a month with other people in a large convoy, with meagre food rations.
“We took a little bit of sorghum but we finished it. Since arriving here, I haven’t eaten for two days,” Ombasha said, and neither have her 12 children and seven grandchildren. “Some of the children have diarrhoea and some of them have headaches, they were complaining all the way of the pain.”
Alex Balla, coordinator for the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) state aid agency in Maban County, said in addition to the refugees, the area had received an estimated 16,000 returnees from the north since independence in July.
“We are expecting 30,000 refugees in Doro soon; some are still on the way and they are coming together with the returnees,” Balla said.
“It will be very challenging to the host community because they didn’t produce [enough harvests] for their own [needs due to floods in August that affected an estimated 80,000 residents],” he said.
“There’s a shortage of food in Maban County in general as well. The WFP [World Food Programme] is now bringing the food but the food basket is incomplete. As you see now, people are just distributing beans and salt.
“In Doro some people are getting food and some people are not – they are just eating leaves from the trees,” Balla said.
Mere på http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94472
