Aid workers resume operations in Chad camps

AID workers who were forced to leave two refugee camps in Chad because of violence have resumed their operations.

The camps in eastern Chad house tens of thousands of Sudanese who have fled from the conflict in the Darfur region.

Meanwhile a Sudanese rebel leader has said his group will not talk to Sudan’s government until it disarms Arab militias suspected of killings.

Khalil Ibrahim, leader of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement, has accused the government of arming the Janjaweed militias. The pro-government Arab militias have forced more than one million black Africans from their homes and killed thousands in Darfur.

Peace talks hosted by the Africa Union were suspended last week when rebel groups walked out, blaming the collapse on the government for refusing to meet their conditions.

Yesterday, the aid agency Oxfam planned to send a plane to Darfur, carrying 30 tons of water and sanitation equipment.

In neighbouring Chad, relief work at the Farchana and Bredjing camps had to be suspended four days ago after violence broke out.

Two aid workers were injured when they were attacked with stones.

The trouble escalated when the Chadian army moved in last week and soldiers opened fire, killing an alleged ringleader of the trouble and a woman refugee standing behind him.

Chad’s camps provide shelter for an estimated 120,000 Sudanese refugees. The relief agencies are struggling to give shelter, food, water and medicine.

Meanwhile, Pope John Paul II called on the international community yesterday to work to bring peace to the conflict-wracked African regions of Darfur and northern Uganda.

The pontiff told thousands who attended his Sunday angelus blessing at his summer residence outside Rome that children were bearing the brunt of the violence in Uganda.

“For more than 18 years, northern Uganda has been struck by a brutal conflict, involving millions of people, especially children. Many of them, in the throes of poverty and deprived of any future, feel obliged to become soldiers.

“I ask the international community and national political leaders to put an end to this tragic conflict and bring about a real prospect of peace to the whole Ugandan nation.”

The Pope reiterated his concerns over the conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, to where he dispatched a special envoy on Thursday to press the government to reach a “just solution” to the conflict.

“The war, which has intensified in recent months, brings with it even more poverty, desperation and death,” the pope said.

“How can we remain indifferent? I sorrowfully call on political leaders and the international organisations so that our stricken brothers are not forgotten.”

More than 10,000 people are estimated to have died in Darfur and at least 1.2 million have been driven from their homes, many of them to squalid camps in Chad, since a revolt against the Arab-dominated government broke out among indigenous ethnic minorities in February 2003.