El Fasher , July 10(Darfur 24)
Thousands of Sudanese fleeing the war are still stuck in the border, waiting to reach neighboring Libya on a new refugee journey to escape the bloody war that broke out in Sudan 16 months ago.
Othman Muhammad Al-Hamri, a dispatcher in the border triangle, which is about 2,000 kilometers north of the capital, Khartoum, said that dozens of families have arrived in the triangle every day since the war began in April last year, on their way to the Libyan city of Kufra, 600 kilometers northeast of the border triangle.
The number of people stranded in the Triangle this July was estimated at approximately 10,000, most of them women, children and the elderly.
Othman told “Darfur 24” that the displaced people were crowded in the triangle because there were no cars to take them to Kufra, which caused overcrowding in the buildings of the locality, and they were in dire need of water, health, food and shelter services.
It is noteworthy that the Triangle area is a point for gold mining and border trade, not equipped with any services.
Al-Hamri revealed that the prices of travel tickets from the Triangle to Kufra increased from 75,000 pounds to 150,000 pounds after the recent decisions of the Libyan authorities to restrict the movement of Sudanese refugees towards their lands, deploy forces to monitor the borders, and impose deterrent penalties against smugglers.
He points out that the suffering experienced by those fleeing in the border triangle forced hundreds to return to some cities inside the country, including the North and the Nile River, which are close to the triangle.
During their trip to the city of Kufra, dozens of citizens were injured as a result of car accidents.
Accident victims
Idris Mahjoub, head of the health emergency room in the city of Kufra on the border with Sudan, told “Darfur 24” that the clinical capacity of Attiya Al-Kaseh Hospital has become unable to accommodate more victims of accidents that Sudanese refugees are exposed to while traveling to Kufra.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Libya office announced last June that more than 40,000 Sudanese refugees had been registered since the start of the war in April 2023.
She said in a post on her Facebook page that more than 20,000 Sudanese requested protection and assistance from UNHCR.
In the same vein, Haitham Yassin Al-Amin, a member of the Sudanese Refugee Reception Initiative Committee in the Libyan city of Kufra, revealed the presence of thousands of refugees in farms and squares, with hundreds entering daily from Sudan.
Haitham told “Darfur 24” that some families are considering a reverse return to Sudan due to the bad conditions facing many of them, despite the efforts of the Libyan government, which has been providing them with large supplies of food, drinking water, blankets, and tarpaulins since February and April, most recently last June.
He pointed out that farms are crowded with families in a tragic situation that requires the intervention of national and international organizations to provide them with health and nutritional services.
He confirmed the presence of some families in the city of Kufra to complete the procedures, noting that they had run out of medical test supplies to obtain the health card and the security identification card, preventing them from traveling to the rest of the cities.
According to Haitham, the number of Sudanese in the city of Kufra reached about 40,000 Sudanese, while some of them headed towards the cities of “Jalo, Al-Bayda, Al-Marj, Ajdabiya, Tobruk and Benghazi” in the eastern Libyan region, while others headed towards “Misrata and Tripoli” in the west.
The Libyan authorities have restricted the entry of Sudanese into the Libyan borders since last April, and informed the Sudanese authorities on the border between the two countries of this. They justified this by restricting and legalizing the presence of Sudanese refugees inside the city of Kufra.
The Libyan authorities deployed a number of desert patrols, prevented the smuggling of fuel and migrants, tightened entry procedures, confiscated cars, and imposed fines exceeding 7,000 dinars, or the equivalent of 1,000 US dollars, on the violating vehicle driver in transporting Sudanese families within the Libyan border.
In a statement on its website, viewed by “Darfur 24” on Tuesday, the European Union allocated half a million euros in humanitarian funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide primary health care for the most vulnerable groups of Sudanese fleeing to Libya.
The Union said that more than 1,200 Sudanese enter Libya daily from Kufra, and that this number represents a six-fold increase compared to December 2023.
The union indicated that nearly half of the new arrivals are women and children, joining about 40,000 Sudanese who are already present and distributed throughout southeastern Libya.
The amount will be used to establish a mobile clinic to provide medical treatment directly to vulnerable Sudanese groups, send medical teams including mental health specialists, and provide supplies and equipment to improve health services.