Refugees Africa

Dozens of Africans traveling through the desert to avoid border checks died of thirst after their truck broke down, stranding them in the Sahara, the Libyan Interior Ministry said. The bodies of 93 people were found Thursday at Libya's southern border, a ministry statement said. The Sudanese truck driver and 25 others survived. No details about their rescue were available. The travelers were not carrying identification papers, security officials said.

After suffering nearly two decades of almost daily beatings from her husband, Ethiopian-born Tsehai Wodajo fled to a domestic violence shelter three years ago. But she didn't understand the laws protecting battered women and was uncomfortable with the shelter's procedures. Terrified and confused, she left on the second day. "I cannot fit there," she said. "I went back home."

The fighting that has rocked Congo, the Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic in recent months follows a pattern of unrest plaguing much of the region, analysts say, noting that Rwanda, Burundi, Angola, Sudan and Uganda all have been riven by insurgencies and are struggling to avert more bloodshed.

Rebecca Wani's odyssey began in 1992 when raiders attacked her village in southern Sudan, killing her father. She fled in panic, beginning a life among people she barely knew. Six years later, the 27-year-old stands forlornly outside a U.N. office in suburban Cairo, hoping to be granted a status that she reckons she richly deserves: refugee.

Working as a cashier at an LAX parking lot isn't the most action-packed job, but that's just fine with Sara Arkangelo. She had her share of action, and fear, fleeing the bombs and bullets of a fierce civil war in her native Sudan. Even after Arkangelo escaped, she and her family endured three years in dusty, overcrowded refugee camps where nighttime raids by roving bandits were a common occurrence. But that's all behind her. "I have peace now.

The haul of weapons this country's new rulers collected from its former government officials last month was impressive in its diversity. The guns lay in a pile at the collecting station, where a youthful rebel soldier, now part of a regular army, issued receipts: Soviet-made carbines and AK-47 automatic rifles predominated, but there were also Belgian rifles, Israeli Uzis and even a lonely American Winchester.

Pope John Paul II, arriving Saturday in Tanzania at the start of a 10-day, four-country African tour, lost no time in tackling two of the continent's gravest problems: AIDS and refugees. Within three hours of a tumultuous welcome from hundreds of thousands of people on the Tarmac of Dar es Salaam airport, the 70-year-old pontiff called for a massive international effort to combat AIDS.

Lual Teng Atia demonstrated his learning by writing his name in the dirt with a stick. He shyly admitted to being 14 years old--although he was not quite sure. Why did he come to this place, he was asked. With an expression of implacable gravity heartbreaking in one so young, he uttered a single word: "Riak." An interpreter spoke up. "That means 'disaster,' " he said. It had been an evening three years ago.

Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), strongly defending his actions but contending that further argument would be counterproductive, said Monday that he will ask Congress to rescind an $8-million grant to African Jews in France that he had steered through Capitol Hill last December. Contrary to some news media reports, Inouye said, "I did not sneak this legislation into law."

Drought once was cited as the main reason refugees roamed southern Africa. Today the drought has subsided, but there are more starving refugees than ever. The new reason: political turmoil, according to relief officials. "There are now proportionately far more uprooted Angolans and Mozambicans than there were uprooted Ethiopians during the (famine) tragedy of 1984," Roger Winter, director of the privately funded U.S.