– Workers assess aid needs –
“I don’t know why they burned my house,” she said, asking for food and shelter.
A convoy of aid workers left El Fasher for Zam Zam on Monday to try to assess the needs of the new arrivals, the United Nations said.
After weeks of little progress in requests to authorities for aid access in Darfur after the recent displacements, there was significant improvement at the end of March, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last week.
Assessments have already been made in some areas, and the UN’s World Food Programme says it is providing food to people affected in North Darfur’s El Taweisha and El Lait districts, and in South Darfur’s Khor Abeche.
North Darfur’s governor Osman Kbir said on local television that the humanitarian situation in the eastern part of the state, in Mellit, and around El Fasher “is 100 percent stable”.
Those still waiting for help in Zam Zam are fending for themselves.
Some are in poor health, and the cries of children carry across the desert sand.
People shelter under trees, in the remains of abandoned houses, or make simple huts from bits of cloth and wood.
More solid mud-brick homes are found in the older section of Zam Zam which hosts more than 100,000 people, many of whom have lived there for years. A tribal leader said drug use is widespread among the camp’s idle youth who grew up with no education.
Newly displaced boys walk two to three kilometres from Zam Zam’s outskirts into the sprawling older quarter to pump water.
They carry it back in plastic containers while girls forage for firewood.
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