Although the Egyptian military has dispatched several plane loads of humanitarian relief aid to Darfur, the people there need and expect much more. Amira Ibrahim reports As part of the international community's efforts to stem the deteriorating conditions in Darfur, Egypt began airlifting relief aid last week to hundreds of thousands of Sudanese people in dire need of food, medicine and other basic supplies. Five Hercules C-130 cargo planes carrying 1,000 tonnes of food, medicine, tents, and vaccines, as well as ambulances and a medical team, began arriving in Al-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, mid-last week. The last plane arrived on Saturday, a Defence Ministry official said. The donations came from the Egyptian Red Crescent society. Within two days, the Egyptian medical team had established a field hospital that included a number of clinics, which began their work on the spot. The Egyptian relief effort was mainly directed at the northern, and largest, of Darfur's three regions. The refugee camps there are currently populated by more than 300,000 of the nearly one million Sudanese who fled the violence in Darfur. "It is the area most affected by the impact of the civil war in Sudan," the official source said. After distributing 15,000 tons of food to the area, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) had warned that tens of thousands of people in hard-to- reach areas still urgently needed relief. Much of the international community has since responded to the call. The US announced that it was sending $30 million in emergency food aid, while France has also begun airlifting relief supplies to eastern Chad, where some 150,000 Sudanese refugees have crossed the border to escape the fighting. The Egyptian military source quoted Sudanese officials as saying that sanitary conditions in the camps had improved, and that the refugees now had food. Aid workers, however, have also said that because the region's rainy season had already set in, many of the area's roads had become impassable, meaning relief supplies would have to be transported by air. The key problem there appeared to be the shortage of helicopters to move the supplies in. Abul-Shok, the largest refugee camp in Al-Fasher, was established four months ago over a 12-kilometre area. One of seven refugees camps in northern Darfur, where refugees are mostly African Muslims, Abul-Shok hosts about 42,000 refugees, who are mostly women and children. The governor of Darfur, Othman Kubr, told Egyptian reporters accompanying the relief shipments that, "we always expected Egypt to make its presence felt in such a crisis, as it is the only country we trust." At the same time, he said the people of Darfur were hoping Egypt's contribution would go far beyond humanitarian relief. At the makeshift Egyptian field hospital in Al-Fasher, meanwhile, a military source said some 500 cases a day were being tended to. Most involved people suffering from malnutrition and epidemic diseases. The UNICEF, the WHO and several European organisations have all contributed towards providing medical aid in the region. According to Kubr, "the UNICEF also established a number of schools that serve about 10,000 primary school pupils." Other Arab contributions have come from the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, and most recently, from Saudi Arabia.
