South Sudanese refugees no strangers to Sudan

As recently as last September, a survey by the International Organisation for Migration found that almost every single one of about 20,000 ethnic southerners still living in squalid Khartoum-area camps wanted to go back to their ancestral homeland.

But that was before fighting that began in mid-December between army troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and a loose coalition of army defectors and ethnic militia nominally headed by his sacked vice-president Riek Machar.

Up to 10,000 people are believed to have lost their lives in the fighting. Mass killings and rape have also been reported, along with widespread destruction of property.

The UN says about 700,000 have been forced from their homes in the impoverished nation.

More than 112,000 of those have fled as refugees to neighbouring countries, mostly to Uganda, but an estimated 20,000 people have also crossed north into Sudanese territory, the UN says.

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A member of the Red Crescent organizes food products as South Sudanese refugees wait for the distrib …

"It's not the first time I came to Sudan," Salva says at the camp in Sudan's White Nile state about 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the border with the South.

"During the civil war I lived in Khartoum. Then I went back in 2006 after the peace agreement."

The South held a referendum under that deal and voted overwhelmingly for separation.

A nurse and mother of seven children, Salva says she is from the South's Wadkona town but her husband was in Malakal, the Upper Nile state capital where tank battles were reported earlier this month.

"We don't know what happened to him," she says among dozens of white tents set up by the Sudanese Red Crescent for the new arrivals on a barren landscape of sand.

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South Sudanese refugees walk in a camp run by the Red Crescent on January 27, 2014 in Sudan's Wh …

Some refugees have made shelters by attaching donated tarpaulins to spindly trees which hug the ground.

Others wait to fill plastic jerry cans with water.

"We expect some illnesses because there are no toilets," says Aman Tital of the Red Crescent.

"Most of the people here are women and children and they are tired after a long journey on foot, without eating."

Kuwait's Red Crescent, the UN, and Sudan's aid commission have provided the camp with assistance including shelter and food, Tital says, putting the camp population at about 8,000.

Among them is Ibrahim Jadin who arrived with his wife and six children.

Jadin, too, is no stranger to Sudan but unlike Salva he would prefer to be back home in the South.

He says he lived in Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman during the civil war, and headed south when peace arrived in 2005.

"If the fighting stops in South Sudan it's better for me to go back," he says. "There's nothing for me here. In the South I farm and have a piece of land."

• Politics & Government
• South Sudan
• Sudan

Source http://news.yahoo.com/south-sudanese-refugees-no-strangers-sudan-221541831.html