Thousands of villagers have been forced to flee their homes after more than a week of heavy clashes between Sudanese forces and rebels in North Darfur, aid sources said on Monday. Entire villages have been abandoned after residents took shelter in surrounding mountains and open land, cut off from food aid and clinics, humanitarian officers said.
The fighting has further undermined hopes for peace at a time the government is trying to challenge an attempt by the International Criminal Court's prosecutor to try President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes in the western region. A UN investigator said on Monday that the human rights situation was grim in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan.
Darfur rebel groups said Sudanese soldiers and allied militias launched a string of heavy ground and air attacks on their positions in north Darfur throughout last week and over the weekend. One rebel leader said fighting continued on Monday.
A spokesman for Sudan's armed forces last week said soldiers had entered some of the areas mentioned by the rebels. But he said troops were securing roads against bandit attacks and did not mention any clashes. There was no comment on Monday. "The areas have emptied out," said one aid source, speaking on condition of anonymity. "People are moving, but at the moment it is unclear whether they are going to other villages, to the mountains, to the camps.
Another source said thousands of people were affected. The reports of clashes came at a time of year when food supplies are lowest before the harvest. The United Nations' most senior humanitarian official in Sudan, Ameerah Haq, told reporters late on Sunday that UN officers had not been able to access remote areas.
"We are very worried about what impact these operations is having on the civilian population ... With the government attacks there is obviously displacement of civilian populations. But we don't have reliable numbers," she said. Frankfurt-based aid group Partner Aid International said eyewitnesses had told staff its clinic in Khazan Tunjur and four surrounding villages south-west of Tawila had been burned to the ground during the violence on Sunday morning.
"Large groups of the remaining population are fleeing the area," it added in a statement. The undermanned joint UN/African Union UNAMID peacekeeping force in Darfur last week said government forces had barred it from entering areas reportedly hit by the fighting and added it did not have helicopters needed to fly over the affected region.
More than five years of fighting in Darfur has left 200,000 people dead and driven more than 2.5 million from their homes, say international experts. Khartoum says 10,000 have died.
UN investigator Sima Samar, in a report for the UN Human Rights Council, said breaches of humanitarian law were being committed not only in Darfur but in other parts of Sudan, including the south.
"Despite some steps by the government of Sudan, principally in the area of law reform, the human rights situation on the ground remains grim, with many interlocutors even reporting an overall deterioration," she wrote. Samar said government forces had attacked civilians in Darfur and other serious incidents had occurred in fighting between Darfuri rebel groups. She said serious violations also occurred during a rebel attack near the capital in May.