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ERITREA: Hundreds of thousands flee fighting

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) have been asked by the Eritrean authorities to provide emergency assistance for some 200,000 newly displaced persons near the front lines, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York on Thursday. Food items such as ready-to-eat meals and high-protein biscuits as well as medicine, water and shelter materials have been requested. The UN has set up an emergency response unit on the ground comprising UN humanitarian agencies, NGOs and representatives from the Eritrean government, Eckhard said.

WFP said from New York it would be part of a planned assessment mission by the UN and the government to areas where people were moving to determine numbers and needs. The government claims 550,000 people from villages and settlement camps, mainly from the Gash Barka region, were moving towards the towns of Haikoita and Agordat, approximately 50-100 km from Barantu. Absence of aid personnel made it difficult to get exact information. WFP said families had fled villages and camps without their belongings, pots and pans, fuel and water. WFP said it would be a major challenge to move food to the interior "given that the population is mobile, and many areas are insecure". According to a briefing in New York, WFP has no high-energy ready-to-eat food commodities in-country and has contacted other WFP offices in the region for available stocks so as to get them into Eritrea as quickly as possible.

A UN official told IRIN: "I don't think the enormity of the humanitarian crisis in Eritrea has really been recognised yet. It's early days yet - but it is massive".

ERITREA: Refugees and troops flee into Sudan

Thousands of Eritrean refugees from the fighting around the Eritrean town of Barentu have been crossing the border into Sudan's Kassala state. According to Sudanese press reports, the new influx amounted to tens of thousands of people, including civilians and troops. Some 50,000 had crossed into Kassala near Luffah by late Thursday, the official 'Al Anbaa' newspaper reported. Security forces were disarming Eritrean soldiers and special camps were being set up for the fleeing military, local reports said. The UNHCR put the figure of new arrivals at between 6,000 and 20,000, but said there were reports of up to 80,000 more waiting to cross the border. UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said the agency was well placed to deal with the emergency as it already had camps along the border housing some 160,000 Eritrean refugees, some of whom had been there for the past 25 years. The Eritrean authorities estimated the total number of Eritreans displaced by the fighting over the last few days at 1.5 million.

ERITREA: Long-term refugees volunteering to fight

Meanwhile, the Middle Eastern television station 'El Gezira' reported that thousands of Eritrean refugees in Sudan were returning to Eritrea to offer themselves for national service. Humanitarian sources in the region could not confirm the report. Sudan was a vital centre for the Eritrean People's Liberation Front before the movement won independence for the former Ethiopian province in 1991. Recently, Khartoum has taken steps to improve its relations with Ethiopia. Some 135,000 refugees returned home to Eritrea from Sudan immediately after independence. A further 24,000 were repatriated with the help of UNHCR in 1994-5. A UNHCR spokesman told IRIN that before the latest outbreak of fighting, surveys among the refugee population indicated that many wanted to be repatriated, aware that they would be eligible for military service on their return. A UNHCR repatriation plan had envisaged up to 15,000 refugees returning to Eritrea by September.

ERITREA: Two international airlines suspend flights

Egypt Air suspended from Thursday all flights to and from Asmara because of "war risk", airline personnel in Nairobi told IRIN. Air Kenya, which recently initiated a direct Nairobi-Asmara flight in its new regional service, has also suspended flights because of the war. Personnel in Nairobi confirmed to IRIN that civil aviation authorities had instructed the airline to suspend its flights until further notice. Diplomatic sources in Asmara said there have been large crowds of people outside the Lufthansa Airline office in Asmara.

ETHIOPIA: Attack reported on Humera

Eritrean forces have shelled Humera in northwest Ethiopia, on the Sudan border, according to diplomatic sources in Ethiopia. The source told IRIN that there were reports from northern Ethiopia of people evacuating Humera, a town of about 15,000.

ETHIOPIA: Air force targets Masawa

The Ethiopian air force has bombed "selected strategic positions" in the vicinity of the Red Sea port of Masawa, the Ethiopian government claimed. Eritrean government spokesman Yemane Gebremeskel told journalists that the attack, in which one civilian was killed, had been on a small town south of Masawa.

ETHIOPIA: Aid distribution planned to resume in north

Aid distribution in northern Ethiopia was scheduled to resume on Friday, humanitarian sources told IRIN. Aid agencies suspended programmes when fighting began, but will now distribute in Shire, western zone of Tigray, where monthly distributions were one-week late. War-displacement in northern Ethiopia was currently "not particularly significant", one source said.

ETHIOPIA: Walita malnutrition rates "alarming"

Severe malnutrition levels in Walita, North Omo, are "alarming", humanitarian sources told IRIN. A Concern-led team in Damot Weyde reported that over 1,000 children were identified as in need of therapeutic feeding, and about 2,500 of supplementary feeding. It reported 30 percent severe malnutrition. This was in contrast with a Concern nutritional study in April which had found a 4 percent severe malnutrition rate. Concern believes that the huge increase is a result of many of the children who were moderately malnourished rapidly deteriorating to under 70 percent weight-for-height. Aid workers say only one area has been monitored, suggesting other areas in Walita may be as severely affected. Two therapeutic feeding centres had been planned as a result of the April survey, but Concern anticipates it may now need up to 6-10 centres. Three consecutive poor harvests and failure of the recent Belg rains have led to the present food security crisis, the Concern nutritional survey noted.

Walita was the original epicentre of the 1984 famine and suffered another severe food crisis in 1994. It is one of the most densely populated regions in Ethiopia and has a high concentration of NGO activities. Concern withdrew from the area in 1998, in line with a government policy under which NGOs were expected to work in an area for a maximum of five years before handing over programmes to local authorities and local NGOs. Precarious as a "food insecure area", it has been called the area of "green famine" because, despite its fertile landscape, it is the most densely populated region - with over 700 people per square kilometre - with small land holdings, serious soil erosion and a dependency on rain fed agriculture.

ETHIOPIA: Decreasing highland rains lessen flood pressure

Rains in the Ethiopian highlands have lessened but not stopped over the last few days, humanitarian sources told IRIN. Monitoring systems in Ethiopia were "very limited", making it difficult to monitor potential flash floods of the Shebelle in the Ogaden and southern Somalia, one source said. Apart from a couple of weather stations in the Bale area, satellite imagery is the only way to monitor the upper catchments of the Shebelle, which flows into southern Somalia. Aid workers in the Kelafo Ogaden region said water levels, which flooded some areas last week, were now receding - but warned that "another pulse of water" could cause serious problems locally and in southern Somalia. The UN is hoping to monitor rain from the Ethiopian highlands as part of its preventative action in flood-affected areas in southern Somalia.

SOMALIA: Peace talks continue in Djibouti

Traditional leaders from Darod, Hawiye, Digil and Dir continue to meet in the Somalia National Peace Conference held in Arta, Djibouti, with 30 in each group, as well as representatives of minorities, according to diplomatic sources. The leaders were still choosing delegates and have been encouraged by the Djibouti government to limit the total number to 140. The conveners of the conference were encouraging the delegations to include a significant number of women. The role of the "warlords" was still being debated, with some putting pressure on the traditional leaders to include them in the delegations, the sources said. Some 600 Somalis who play no formal role were at the conference to lobby, discuss and prepare for the possible formation of a central government and a parliament, they added.

SUDAN: Southern ethnic groups hold peace and reconciliation talks

More than 250 leaders and representatives of six ethnic groups held talks from 9-15 May in Liliir village, Bor region, Upper Nile, in an effort to reconcile the differences and conflicts that have arisen among them over the past 17 years of civil war. The talks, organised by the New Sudan Council of Churches (NSCC), followed a similar meeting in March 1999 between representatives of the Dinka and Nuer people in Wunlit, Western Upper Nile, and a number of smaller-scale sessions since then, Sudan Infonet, a US-based information service, reported. The Liliir talks were attended by civic and traditional leaders from the Anyuak, Dinka, Jie, Kachipo, Murle and Nuer ethnic groups. The participants concluded the talks by signing a public covenant undertaking to cease traditional hostilities, respect civilian populations and create conditions to foster local peace and development. The declaration pledged to uphold an amnesty for all offences against people and property committed before the conference, to return all women and children abducted from their place of origin, to allow freedom of movement and encourage trade and communication and to regulate and share access to common areas for grazing, fishing and water supply. The declaration also noted that some ethnic groups had been unable to attend the meeting - or had been prevented from doing so - and called for the widening and deepening of the process.

[ENDS]

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