Refugees Trapped in Sudanese City Besieged by Rebels

For a lucky few in the besieged, refugee-jammed Sudanese city of Juba, $350 can buy space on a packed cargo plane to Khartoum. For others, there is virtually no escape.

Refugees said that the Sudanese army is preventing thousands of frightened civilians from fleeing to rebel-held territory outside the town to escape shellfire, food shortages and the threat of rebel attack.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Army, which surrounds Juba, has urged civilians to leave before it launches a full-scale attack on the army garrison.

The city holds 300,000 people, two-thirds of them refugees from other areas. Few can afford to leave through Juba airport, which is the only permitted outlet, according to civilians who have taken the 750-mile flight north to Khartoum.

One who arrived Tuesday said he paid $355 to fly aboard a cargo plane packed with people, mainly women and children.

Foreign relief officials said authorities in Juba are preventing civilians from leaving in the hope that their presence will deter the rebels from launching an all-out attack.

Refugees reported short food supplies in the city.

No overland convoys of relief food have reached the city since September, 1988.

Relief flights of corn and beans from Uganda and Kenya were banned for three months until last Wednesday by the Khartoum government, a restriction that has allowed only limited supplies to be flown in from Khartoum.

The rebels have been fighting a guerrilla war since 1983 against what it sees as the domination of mainly Christian and animist southern Sudan by the staunchly Muslim and Arab north.