Traumatized Darfur refugees seek safety in Chad

By Stephanie Hancock

BIRAK, Chad (Reuters) - The sun-blasted desert between this small Chadian border town and Sudan's Darfur is scattered with stunted trees and thorny shrubs.

Beneath each one, Sudanese refugees huddle under blankets or sheets tied to branches, desperately seeking shade.

Thousands have fled with their children and belongings from Sudanese army and militia offensives against a mountainous Darfuri rebel stronghold, Jebel Moon, whose silhouette is visible in the shimmering heat over the border.

The luckier arrivals are crowded into straw shelters on the outskirts of Birak, a settlement of mostly mud-brick homes and a few concrete buildings that lies at the crossroads of armed conflicts being waged on both sides of the frontier.

Between 10,000 and 20,000 Darfuri refugees have poured into Birak in the last two weeks since Sudan's army and its Janjaweed militia allies launched what they called a "cleansing" operation to try to dislodge insurgents from Jebel Moon in West Darfur.

Shocked and Traumatized, most refugees say their villages in Jebel Moon were bombed by Sudanese army aircraft and then attacked by Janjaweed fighters riding in vehicles and on horses and camels.

Crouching alone under a tree, 90-year-old Ali Abdan Doudou counts on the fingers of his gnarled hands the members of his family who were killed in the attacks. The dead include his brother, several of his children, nieces and nephews.

"Since my birth, I've never seen planes bombing like this. There were no warning signs the attack would come," he said.

Another refugee, Adam Aboho, said: "They came to kill us.

"We were able to bring nothing with us. Some people were lucky and had time to gather food, but I brought nothing out apart from my children.". He said he was being forced to beg for food from neighbors.

AMPUTATED LIMBS

When villagers tried to flee the bombings, they ran into encircling Sudanese army troops and Janjaweed who killed and raped, and looted and torched homes, the refugees said.

Birak residents said they heard the bombing raids over the border and saw plumes of smoke rising on the horizon.

Many arrived injured from the fighting and the hospital at Guereda, a larger Chadian town northwest of Birak, is filled with women and children with bullet wounds. Several young children have had limbs amputated.

Sudanese spokesmen blamed the attacks against civilians on Darfuri rebels and on Chadian government and rebel forces, all of whom crisscross the porous frontier.