Driving through the arid dustbowl around Birak in eastern Chad, just a few kilometres from the western border of war-torn Sudan, you could easily miss the influxes of refugees. Hidden away from the naked eye, only local people can point to where the thousands are gathering in scattered groups. Spread out across 600 km of desiccated desert, protected only by trees and bush, and foraging to survive in the scrub, are up to 135,000 people from the Darfur region of western Sudan. Hidden from the outside world, and extremely hard to find for aid workers trying to assist them, refugees in Kourbileke (about 2 km from the border) told IRIN they had fled for their lives from Sudanese bombs on 16 January.