Children displaced by war in eastern Chad take a bath
near a communal well in the Aradib camp for internally displaced persons
in Chad May 29. Almost 200,000 Chadians have been displaced by conflict
in this region of the country, where a quarter-million refugees from the
Darfur region of Sudan also reside in burgeoning camps.
CNS PHOTO/PAUL JEFFREY
As rebels
launch new attacks in Chad,
CRS sends foreign staff out of country
By Paul Jeffrey
Catholic News Service
N’DJAMENA, Chad (CNS) — As rebel troops
raced across the desert in what some fear might be a repeat of February’s
assault on the Chadian capital, Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops’
international relief and development agency, began evacuating its non-Chadian
staff to neighboring Cameroon,, June 16.
“We don’t want to wait until the last minute,” he said
June 16. CRS was planning a joint convoy of vehicles across the border
with CARE, another humanitarian agency.
Chadian rebels attacked N’Djamena, the oil-rich nation’s capital,
during a February assault that resulted in hundreds of deaths and widespread
damage. The CRS office in the city was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade
and later looted by local residents. The agency lost two vehicles and
several computers. Four months later, the office still does not have enough
chairs, leaving staff members to carry their own chairs to meetings.
During the February battle the displaced CRS staff did not lack for work
across the border in Cameroon, where they took refuge. They worked with
Cameroon’s Catholic Church for three weeks, providing emergency
shelter and food to many of the 30,000 Chadians who also fled across the
border to escape the fighting.
“We’re ready to do the same thing again if the rebels come
back to N’Djamena,” said Samba Fall, head of the agency’s
programs in Chad.
CRS has worked in Chad since 1985, beginning as an outreach of the agency’s
office in Cameroon. Since 2007, it has been a separate operation, providing
support to a Chadian Catholic agency that works in three refugee camps
in the country’s east.
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