Clashes force more Sudanese out

By Andrew Harding BBC correspondent in Tine, Chad

The UN has started taking families to new camps

There has been a new surge of refugees fleeing the fighting in western Sudan.

Aid workers in neighbouring Chad say thousands of civilians arrived in the last few days. Many say their villages were bombed and attacked by militias.

Most families have walked for days, braving the sandstorms and freezing nights to escape from Sudan.

Thousands who arrived in Chad in the past few days are camping out in the open. Some came with herds of goats and camels, many with almost nothing.

Brutal

A six-year old boy called Dahab died of hunger just a few hours ago.

He is buried in the sand which swirls constantly around this arid fringe of the Sahara.

Dahab's family are part of a new wave of refugees which has spilled over the border in the last four days, evidence of an upsurge in fighting.

Many describe how their villages have been bombed by Sudanese government planes and then attacked by militia gangs on horseback.

There is strong evidence that Sudan's government is behind the Arab militias, using them to crush a local rebellion in Darfur in brutal style.

This region is so isolated and inaccessible that the full scale of the conflict is hard to gauge.

At least 600,00 civilians are believed to have been forced to flee their homes.

A hundred thousand of them have crossed the border into Chad.

They are relatively safe here, but aid agencies have only managed to bring help to a tiny fraction of them.