Floods In Chad Block Aid To Displaced Families And Refugees.

DAKAR, 20 September 2007 (IRIN) - Flooding in eastern Chad has “seriously hampered” aid agencies’ assistance to tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadians, according to the UN Refugee Agency.

“UNHCR is having difficulty supplying field staff with various goods, while the agency and others have delayed or cancelled missions in the region,” the agency said in a statement released on 19 September.

Many of the roughly 170,000 displaced Chadians in the east are affected.

In the Koukou Angarana region in south eastern Chad, many displaced people as well as local residents have left their shelters or homes and headed for higher ground.

One town affected in the area, Goz Amir, is where UNHCR runs one of its 12 camps for the some 230,000 Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad. The camp holds an estimated 18,000 people.

The road between Abeche, the UNHCR logistics hub, and Farchana, the gateway to several refugee camps near the border with Sudan's Darfur region, is impassable.

Aid can now be transported to some outposts only by air and even some airstrips have been damaged by heavy rains, UNHCR said.

The agency also said the homes of many local residents have been destroyed or damaged by the floods.

The rains, which began in mid-June, are not expected to end until late September or early October.