Race against time to help refugees
"Logistically speaking this mission is a major challenge. Water is the main problem in this arid region," Yvan Sturm, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) co-ordinator for eastern Chad, said.
"We have to sink wells to reach the water table. For 100,000 refugees we will have to spend about two million dollars just on the wells," said Sturm, who is based in the Chadian town of Abeche.
Sturm said an additional problem was safety, as refugees remained close to the border and were in danger of coming under attack.
"Indeed, it is because of problems of security that we have pushed back to this week the distribution of food and equipment in the south between Ade and Tizi," he added.
The Sudanese army and armed militias have waged a fierce battle against rebels in the Darfur region since February last year.
The Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) launched a rebellion originally to protest against alleged government neglect of the semi-desert region. The rebellion has cost some 3,000 lives, according to UN estimates.
The rebels also want a share of the region's growing oil revenues.
Sturm said the situation on the ground would get worse and that it was now a race against time to bring proper help to the refugees.
"We have a window of five months before the start of the rainy season which will make the roads impassable," he said.
He said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees could confirm that the number of refugees in Chad had climbed to at least 103,000 following an attack on January 16 by the Sudanese army on a group of villages near the border town of Koulbouss.
"Refugees spoke of bombardments," said Sturm.
"The Chadian authorities say there have been 18,000 new arrivals."
"The UN High Commissioner for Refugees can confirm the presence of 8,000 of those 18,000. They are spread out between Birak and Tine," he said.
He added that he and his colleagues had not been able to reach the southern section of the frontier zone between Chad and Sudan where the Chadian authorities had said the remaining 10,000 refugees were located.
He also confirmed that one UN camp, designed to accommodate 12,000 people, was already operational at Farachana, 68 kilometres from the border and that the UNHCR had begun transporting refugees there at the rate of about 700 per week.
Construction of another camp was due to begin this week at Kounoungo, located 125 kilometres (75 miles) from the frontier and the aim was to open six camps in all with a capacity of 80,000, said Sturm.
UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said the refugees had fled the shooting with little or no belongings, some on foot and some on donkeys. He quoted them as saying the troops who attacked their villages had burned houses and dynamited wells, provoking an exodus of villagers across the border.
Janowski said most of the new arrivals were now camped in the open in the harsh semi-desert of eastern Chad, with little in the way of food, water or shelter, exposed to the hot sun by day and temperatures that dropped to near freezing at night.
Relief agencies have only recently stepped in help out with this hidden crisis in one of the most remote and inaccessible corners of Africa.
Helene Caux, UNHCR's spokesperson in eastern Chad, said earlier this week that each relocated family would be allocated a plot of land, 15 days of food rations and a relief package containing supplies like blankets, soap and mosquito nets.
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