Fieldnotes: Blogging on UNICEF's child survival work in the field

© UNICEF/HQ07-0133/Pirozzi I listen as women and children recount the atrocities they have witnessed. Some 1,000 people live here in the bush after their homes in the nearby village were burned and looted by armed forces.

Today we drove for most of the day through the bush and on the roughest of dirt roads.

We passed through countless burnt villages. Survivors of these attacks have fled into the bush, where they have been living for more than a year.

When we stopped passing by the burnt villages people emerged from behind trees. They have nothing. They survive by eating leaves. They are without clothes, blankets or a clean water source. At least 150,000 people are living under these deplorable conditions.

A woman told me, “Our children are getting sick and dying there is nothing we can do. We can not return to our villages. We would be massacred.”

People told us their attackers were armed men in uniform. It is not clear whether they are government forces or rebel groups.

The humanitarian situation here can not be more dire. We need to help these people. How many innocent people must die before a international peace keeping force is deployed along Central African Republic‘s borders with Chad an Sudan?