Sudan : UN Teams Visit Burnt Villages in Darfur Region of Sudan

UN News Service

  April 29 2004

  A high-level United Nations humanitarian mission in western Sudan , having broken into two teams, today talked to the remaining residents in villages that had been burnt to the ground and discussed with local officials in Darfur the problems of protecting civilians, should strife break out again.

The mission was to assess the scope of what has been characterized as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, as Arab militias attack the local black Sudanese, leading them to flee to neighbouring Chad.

The team led by UN World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director James Morris went to Bandago, where only three elderly men remained out of 250 families, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

The group continued to Korma, about 80 kilometres northwest of El-Fasher in North Darfur , where townspeople said 49 people were killed in a 16 March militia attack and where the marketplace had been completely destroyed.

At Abou Shouk camp the UN team members spoke briefly with internally displaced persons (IDPs) and later stressed to local officials that the IDPs ' areas of origin needed to be safe before they could go home. The team was also scheduled to meet with representatives of the Government of Sudan's Humanitarian Affairs Council.

The team led by the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Humanitarian Affairs for Sudan , Tom Eric Vraalsen, met the governor of South Darfur yesterday and went today to the town of Kass , where IDPs were being housed in public buildings and other "highly unsuitable accommodations."

The hospital in Kass was in bad condition, OCHA said. On the way from Kass to Nyala, the team visited a burnt down village, before meeting with officials and the local peace committee.