Darfur violence still unabated

AID workers have given graphic new evidence of attacks against civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan, further undermining Khartoum’s claims that it is trying to bring security to the area.

Staff from Mdecins Sans Frontires had to leave the village of Saraf Ayat, along with 2,000 civilians, when the attack began last week - believed to have been carried out by government forces.

MSF told The Scotsman that many of those caught up in the attack had already been forced to flee their original home villages and had travelled to Saraf Ayat to seek refuge.

An MSF team was providing medical care to people sheltering in school buildings when the attack began.

A spokesman for the organisation said the team had found 1,500 refugees sheltering in the village when they arrived on Tuesday morning.

Three days earlier they had been driven out of villages north of Tawila, scene of heavy fighting in recent weeks. The spokesman said the refugees were in need of food, medical care, blankets and shelter.

"MSF had just started providing medical assistance when an attack caused both displaced people and residents to flee and forced the MSF team to evacuate," he said.

It was the second time in a week that an MSF team had evacuated because of fighting. After being forced out of the town of Korma, they returned five days later and treated six people, including two children, for bullet wounds.

Jerome Oberreit, of MSF, said: "The fact that people are being forced to repeatedly escape from one place to the next and cannot find a secure place of refuge is extremely worrying.

"Studies carried out by MSF show that during the early phases of the Darfur conflict the pattern of repeated violence and consequent displacement was the cause of very high mortality.

"We are now concerned that we may be seeing a return to such a pattern in north Darfur, with people having to flee over and over again.

"It is absolutely unacceptable that repeated violence against civilians continues in Darfur."

Attacks have continued despite Sudan’s assurances to the United Nations that it will comply with resolutions demanding an end to the fighting. The UN’s own human-rights monitors reported on Friday that the governent-backed Janjaweed militia continued to rape women and girls in the region last month while authorities forcibly moved refugees.

The information was collected from refugees by 16 UN human-rights monitors.

"They are reporting that sexual violence and rape continue to be reported in all three of the regions of Darfur," said a UN human-rights spokesman, Jose Luis Diaz. "Every case is taken up with authorities," he added.

The rapes had contributed to a huge sense of insecurity among many of the 1.6 million internally displaced people driven from their homes since the violence began in 2003. "Women and girls are afraid to leave the camps," Mr Diaz said.

There was also an escalation during November in forced relocations in south Darfur, notably from camps of Al Jeer and Otash, near the capital Nyala, Mr Diaz said.

"Internally displaced people throughout the region continue to fear and distrust the police. There is widespread impunity, which is continuing with reports of police still refusing to record complaints."

Last month, the government in Khartoum denied that it had violated any international law or agreements by moving camps for people who fled their homes, and did not rule out repeating the move.

The violence in Darfur has created what the UN says is one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Recent fighting had put civilians at risk in Masteri, south of west Darfur’s capital, El Geneina, which rebel groups attacked, drawing retaliation by government forces who sent 18 mortars into the village, Mr Diaz said.

"There have also been reports during the period of cases of abduction of civilians by the rebel Sudan Liberation Army in west Darfur," he said. "The situation is very complex and continues to deteriorate."

The number of UN human-rights monitors is set to double shortly to 32, but they remain basically helpless to halt violations in Darfur, where about 1,000 African Union ceasefire monitors are also deployed.

There was very little that the UN monitors could do to prevent it while it was happening, Mr Diaz said.