AL-KARAMEH, Jordan, 21 March 2003 — Packed into buses with luggage and blankets stuffed under their seats, the first group of people to escape war in Iraq and flee to Jordan arrived yesterday at a barren desert camp set up near the border. Three busloads of Sudanese families, dazed from lack of sleep after a journey of more than 18 hours from Baghdad across Iraq’s western desert, disembarked blinking into the sunshine and trudged through deep sand to tents flapping in a blustery sandstorm.
“We ate a few boiled eggs on the way and slept upright in our seats,” said Alawia Abdullah, her eyes watery with tears, as she waited to climb out. Her three children sat silent and wide-eyed next to her in the gloom of the bus. Her husband remained behind in Iraq.
The first group of 275 people from Sudan, arrived in Jordan from Iraq yesterday, just hours after the start of US attacks on Baghdad. On arriving at the border post of Al-Karameh, the Sudanese workers and their families were taken to a refugee camp managed by the Jordanian Red Crescent located 60 kilometers away near the town of Ruweished.
The Sudanese Embassy in Baghdad helped transport them to the Jordan-Iraq border, where some of them immediately headed to the Amman airport to catch a flight home. But not Nadia and her family. “We did not have flight reservations so we will stay in the camp for now and hope to leave for home on Saturday on a flight from Amman,” she said.
Red Crescent workers have braved heavy winds whipped by a sandstorm to erect more than 30 tents in the camp. Other installations, namely toilets, a canteen and a field hospital, have not yet been set up.
According to the Red Crescent, the camp has currently a capacity for 5,000 refugees but could be expanded to take in 25,000 as aid officials continue to admit that they still don’t know how many refugees would reach Jordan. At the border, meanwhile, four buses waited for refugees to arrive. One of the drivers said they were expecting Jordanians and other Arabs to come from Iraq and that they would drive them to Amman, from where the expatriates could catch flights home.
Among those arriving were dozens of Jordan’s university students who were studying in Baghdad, who trekked on foot from the Iraqi border post of Trebil to Al-Karameh, two kilometers away.
Early yesterday, as the US and Britain launched the initial strikes on Iraq, the Jordanian Army took over control of Al-Karameh border region from the police who usually man the area.
Officials at the Jordan Red Crescent said they received 275 Sudanese yesterday, the first batch of non-Iraqis to flee war for Jordan and arrive at the camp run by the Jordanian Red Crescent and its federation with the Red Cross. “We have the capacity to hold up to 5,000 people and expand it if needed,” said Rana Sidani, a spokeswoman. “The third country nationals will come in and should be out again in weeks,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) senior logistics officer Douglas Osmond.
