UN moves 5,400 Darfuri refugees to Chad camps

The United Nations has moved 5,400 Darfuris who fled a government offensive in February to refugee camps in eastern Chad, but 8,000 others remain scattered in the area, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Saturday.

The Sudanese government offensive to retake three major West Darfur towns from rebels killed some 115 people and drove tens of thousands from their homes to either the violent Sudan-Chad border or remote mountain areas.

"The UNHCR has transferred some 5,400 new Sudanese refugees to two Chadian camps," the agency said in a statement. "But we estimate another 8,000 people remain scattered in several villages along the volatile Chad-Sudan border."

About 90 percent of the new refugees were women and children.

Unidentified armed men had until now prevented UNHCR staff from taking refugees who had crossed into Chad to refugee camps, and the agency said the continued insecurity on both sides of the border had made it extremely difficult to move the refugees.

"On Sunday morning, a UNHCR team on the Chad side of the border witnessed aerial bombing on the Sudan side," the agency added.

The new arrivals will share overcrowded camps in arid eastern Chad with some 250,000 other Sudanese refugees.

The refugee crisis stems from the revolt that broke out in the west Sudan region in early 2003 when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms, accusing Khartoum of marginalising the area, and government forces and allied militias tried to crush them.

The fighting sparked a renewal of neighbouring Chad's own civil war, and each government has since then accused the other of arming and sheltering their insurgents.

More than 2 million Darfuris have fled their homes for miserable camps in western Sudan and eastern Chad during the conflict, which international experts say has claimed 200,000 lives.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for a Sudanese government minister and an allied militia leader for war crimes in Darfur. Khartoum accuses the Western media of exaggerating the conflict and refuses to hand over the suspects.