UM DUKHUN, Sudan, April 12 (UPI) -- New tribal clashes in the Darfur region of Sudan drove another 50,000 refugees into Chad, the largest number in years, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.
"Our staff tells us that most of the people fleeing Sudan have arrived on foot, donkeys or on carts to save their lives," said Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
The refugees, the majority of whom are women and children, fled new tribal clashes in the Sudanese town of Um Dukhun, UNHCR said. Fighting has displaced more than 74,000 people into Chad in the last two months.
"Many reported their relatives being killed in the latest round of violence," Fleming said from the agency's headquarters in Geneva.
The refugees arrive in Tissi, Chad, without food or water and sleep under the trees, she said.
"Among them are people wounded by bullets that are abandoned to their fate and are sleeping on the ground," she said. "There is no health center, or operational clinic with surgical materials in this area."
Tissi is about an 8-hour drive on rough roads from the agency's nearest field office in Koukou Angaranana in southwestern Chad.
UNHCR has deployed teams on the Chad-Sudan border to register and assist arriving refugees, and to provide basic items. Fleming said the agency was working with Chadian authorities and others to develop a new refugee camp.
