Thousands of villagers flee after Darfur offensive

Three elderly Darfuri men hack away at a pile of logs, struggling to build a new home in Kondobe town more than a week after they fled their village to escape government attacks and militia looting.

They had hoped to return after the fighting subsided. But they can still hear shooting day and night and could no longer suffer the cramped arrangements with 11 people in a tiny hut.

"We want to return to Bir Dagaig (village)," says Abdallah Ibrahim Tour. "But it's still not safe."

A government offensive to retake three towns from rebels north of the West Darfur state capital el-Geneina unleashed a string of attacks by militia on horses and camels.

Residents say the army mobilised the militia for the attacks. The army denies any links and calls them bandits.

Since the offensive the militia have terrorised nearby villages, forcing thousands from their homes including Tour and hundreds more from his village.

People took refuge in Kondobe, the last urban bastion before el-Geneina, near the border with Chad or sought protection near police and army posts. Those from Bir Dagaig are being hosted by family members in overcrowded conditions in Kondobe.

Kulthoum Ibrahim Adam said she fled Bir Digaig more than a week ago after armed men on horses and camels whipped her and her four-year-old son before stealing everything they owned.

"All I managed to pick up was two dresses, this toub (wrap) and a sheet," she said. Her toub was torn and her tiny son's shirt was filthy.

All her worldly belongings hung from a piece of string in the gloomy hut.

"Didn't you bring me any biscuits?" her son asks. Her husband was killed two months before by armed men on the road to el-Geneina.

WORST VIOLENCE

Sudan's armed forces launched their offensive in West Darfur on February 8 and said they were clearing out fighters from the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Residents of the targeted towns Abu Surouj, Suleia and Sirba, and surrounding villages, said rebels had left days before the attacks.

Aid agencies said up to 60,000 Darfuris were affected and 12,000 fled into neighbouring Chad to escape the worst violence in the region in months.

Locals say more than 100 civilians were killed although they army says many were rebels in civilian clothing.

International experts estimate some 200,000 have died and 2.5 million driven from their homes in almost five years of violence in Darfur which Washington calls genocide. Khartoum rejects the term and puts the death toll at 9,000.

Survivors of the attacks speak of khaki-clad camel and horseback militia they call Janjaweed who stole, raped and killed before the army entered and drove them away.

Sudan's army said these were criminal gangs who took advantage of the offensive to loot and denied any links to them.

In Kondobe, locals pointed out men on horses and camels roaming through the town market in broad daylight and said they were the looters.

Some of the riders wore green army uniforms and carried rifles. When asked, they said they were civilians.

Two others said they belonged to the army and one, al-Sadig Haroun, pulled out his Sudan Armed Forces identity card.

"Sudan is good. These people here (in Kondobe) are our brothers and we have even married with each other," he said.

He belonged to a nearby army base and was from the Arab Rizeigat tribe, he said, and he joined the army two years ago.

Other men on horses with guns slipped under their saddle bags arrived and told journalists to stop filming and berated their colleagues for talking.