AFRICA/SUDAN - Villages torched in Darfur, growing fear among the homeless. UN High Commission for Refugees sounds the alarm

Wednesday, 27 April 2005

Rome (Fides Service) - The United Nations High Commission for Refugees UNHCR has expressed serious concern for new cases of burned abandoned villages in Darfur to discourage the villagers to return home.
At the end of last week a resident of Seraf village, 12 km south of Masteri, took UNHCR operators to inspect the village which he said had been burned on the previous Monday. The man said 200 families living in Seraf fled the village a year ago to escape the fury of Janjaweed militia. Then last week they saw smoke and feared that the village was in flames. All that remains now are broken jars which contained seed and the bricks of the charred houses with straw roofs in ashes. This is clearly a message to warn the villages not to return.
Last year during the month of Ramadan about 55 abandoned villages were torched around Masteri, 50 km south of El Geneina main town in west Darfur made up of a group of about a hundred villages. Now this method appears to have been resumed.
This action comes as about 200,000 people had found the courage to return to their villages in Darfur, from Chad of larger towns and villages in Darfur where they had sought refuge. (AP) (27/4/2005 Agenzia Fides; Righe:23 Parole:252)


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