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Sudanese Lie Exhausted After Long Trek Fleeing War
ED-DIEIN, Sudan, June 21 (News Agencies) - After walking for days to escape fighting that has engulfed their homes, thousands of displaced Sudanese lay exhausted in the open makeshift camp here, complaining that - with rain clouds looming - they are lacking almost everything they need to survive.
"We do not have a shelter to protect us from the rains," said Teresa, sharing a dish of millet flour pudding with her three raggedly clothed children, looking up to the clouds overhead.
Local officials warned that the rains will soon add to the problems of Teresa and nearly 8,000 others, many of whose families have been torn apart by the civil war being fought in Bahr el-Ghazal region to the south.
"There are grave shortages in shelter, clothing, sanitation materials and food items, except for sorghum and millet," regional commissioner Farah Mustafa al-Sanousi said, adding that they fear increasing swarms of flies with rains beginning to fall and insecticides unavailable.
Pregnant women have miscarried on the long walk and many others are still trekking through the jungle, said Hassan Abu Bakr Abdallah, head of the organizing committee for the displaced persons.
He said the 8,000 people crowding the school courtyard in the southwestern town of Ed-Diein were among an estimated total of 50,000 people displaced by the fighting between the government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).
Some squatted in the shade of trees, having walked hundreds of miles from Raja province in Bahr el-Ghazal, former government-held territory which has fallen into rebel hands in an upsurge in the 18-year-old civil war.
Abdullah pointed out a six-month-old baby who he said was abandoned after rebels killed his parents. The nameless baby had now been placed under the care of a young woman in the camp, he said.
"We have now about 400 children without parents in Ed-Diein camp," said Abdallah, himself a displaced person and former merchant in Raja.
But there were also parents who have lost their children.
Weeping incessantly, Nela Kumundan said she lost her five sons and other members of her family, although she had managed to escape the fighting with her husband and two small girls.
Jallab Tameim, who arrived at Ed-Diein on Tuesday, told AFP that his 13-member family, including his wife with newborn baby, was missing.
"When I came back home from my work in the military hospital in Raja, I did not find my family members and I was told by neighbors that they were taken away by the outlaws," Tameim said, referring to the SPLA.
Local officials said that despite a few cases of diarrhea, malaria and lung inflammation, and a general lack of insecticides, the health situation was largely under control in Ed-Diein, with adequate quantities of drugs and two clinics operating round the clock.
Sanousi, the regional commissioner, said aid agencies like the World Food Program (WFP), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Save the Children and Oxfam, had provided valuable assistance.
But a shortage of trucks was hampering plans to get food southwards to people fleeing to Ed-Diein and give them a lift for the rest of their journey, he said.
While the WFP and UNICEF were setting up camps at Firdos, about 40 miles outside Ed-Diein, and sending food south to northern Bahr el-Ghazal, it was the local population in Ed-Diein that was feeding those who had made it to the safety of their town.
Bekheit Abdallah Yagoub, the deputy head of Sudan's governmental Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC), said that with the rainy season starting, they were planning to resettle the displaced in Firdos and Jumaiza camps and provide them with farming plots to help them depend on themselves.
The government was providing tractors, while the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has pledged agricultural donations to 6,000 displaced families, Yagoub said.
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