CAXITO, Angola -- Thousands of people driven from their homes by fighting in northern Angola have poured into a makeshift camp, placing a huge strain on local resources.
Recent arrivals say thousands more are coming behind them as fierce fighting continues between the army and UNITA rebels. Angola's civil war restarted last month, shattering a U.N.-brokered peace accord in this southwest African nation.The influx over the past 20 days of more than 5,000 people has increased the number of displaced people at the grass-hut camp to 23,000, officials said Friday.
"We've got space to take more, but we hope we don't get many more mouths to feed," said Isabel Pegado, the top government aid official in Caxito, 40 miles north of the capital, Luanda.
The World Food Program delivers up to 500 tons of food -- mostly corn, beans and cooking oil -- each month, but that will have to be increased if more people arrive, Pegado said.
Manuel Primeiro, 54, said he and his family fled their village in Piri forest on Dec. 25 when the rebels attacked just before dawn.
"We just ran. We brought nothing. Nothing except the clothes we were sleeping in," he said, sitting beneath a dirty tarpaulin with his year-old granddaughter Lena.
Primeiro, his wife, daughter and two grandchildren walked for over a week across the country to reach the camp, sometimes resting for a day to let their bare feet heal.
A steady stream of women and children make their way in the sticky heat to a river about a mile away from the camp and fetch water in plastic buckets balanced on their head. A warm breeze sweeps across the plain, stirring the dusty soil.
The men build or repair their huts, which are made of branches tied together with supple bark and then covered with abundant tall grass.
Small children, dehydrated and undernourished after their cross-country trek, are fed a special diet of milk and vitamins at a nutrition center in an abandoned church.
At the moment, camp officials say they are managing to cope with the influx.
Angolan officials have experience in dealing with the plight of displaced people. The civil war first began after the country's 1975 independence from Portugal. A 1991 peace deal collapsed the following year, and now a 1994 accord has unraveled.
The rainy season is due to arrive next month. Officials say the rains will crush the grass huts, turn the site to mud, and trigger a rise in cholera and acute diarrhea.
No one expects the war to have stopped before then.
In the capital, Luanda, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos expressed doubts Friday that the United Nations would continue its mission to oversee implementation of the U.N.-brokered peace deal in Angola after its mandate expires next month.