MALAKAL, 28 April 2008 (IRIN) - Dengershufu in Malakal, capital of the Sudanese state of Upper Nile, looks like any low-income suburb of a post-conflict Southern town, with roadside stalls selling dry fish from the nearby River Nile and children playing around in the dust.
"The area is heavily mined, but the people in those homes use it as a bush toilet. Several people could be seen squatting in the sparse grass, others walked or rode bicycles along paths that crossed the minefield. Remnants of cattle carcasses - some blown up by the mines - lay scattered around.
Malakal County, like many areas of Upper Nile State, was a key battlefield during the war, which ended with the signing of the 2005 peace agreement, in turn triggering the return to the South of thousands of refugees outside the country and internally displaced from the North.
The mines and other ordnance were planted by the Southern Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and the Sudan national army - the latter mainly in areas bordering Malakal and the former in other Upper Nile counties such as Baliet and Nasir.
Similar mining activities took place in various towns along the River Nile. While nobody knows how many mines were laid in Upper Nile, according to Argent, the levels of infestation across the state have proved to be generally lower than initially imagined.
Local sources in Malakal said many of returnees had ended up settling in or near mine-contaminated areas, partly through ignorance but also because they had nowhere else to build their shelters. A similar situation pertains in other towns.
"It is mainly the women and children at risk - the women when they go to look for firewood or to dig in the gardens and the children when they play or herd livestock," he added. "The situation in Malakal is aggravated by lack of public and private toilets. People who use open fields are at particular risk." .
"Most of the returnees have not lived in Southern Sudan for years and are unaware of the dangers they may encounter when they return to their home areas or on the way to their home villages," Ahmad Masoud, mine risk education manager at Handicap International, said. "Fresh from Kakuma [a refugee camp in Kenya], it is difficult to tell what a mine looks like."
In recent weeks, the authorities in Malakal have decided to move some of the returnees to a suspected mined area in Dengershufu. Aid workers are up in arms, saying the move will mean deaths from landmines and unexploded ordnance.
"Nobody would like to see a child die because some authority decided people should settle in a particular part of Malakal," said an aid worker on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of ongoing talks to try to reverse the decision.
The state authorities deny claims of insensitivity, saying they are moving people to available land in accordance with long-term post-conflict resettlement strategies and to ensure they benefit from the relative peace that Southern Sudan now enjoys. On 24 April, a grader was at Dengershufu starting to parcel out the land.
But despite the heavy presence of mines and unexploded ordnance across Upper Nile, there have been very few human fatalities. Instead, it is livestock and other animals that have been hit.
In 2007, a returnee woman working in her garden in Nasir found unexploded ordnance and took it home to use as a cooking stone. "One day, it exploded, killing her and her husband," Nyuon said.
In March, four boys were grazing cattle on the outskirts of the town when one threw a stone at a cow. The stone fell on a mine, which blew up, killing the cow and injuring the boys. Days later, five other children found a metallic object in a rubbish dump. They took it home and tried to open it. It exploded, injuring three of them - one of whom lost her fingers.