UP to 200000 Sudanese Christians who fled fighting in the south and set up a village near the capital Khartoum have been chased into a desert zone, the Vatican missionary news agency FIDES reported on Wednesday. Between 150000 and 200000 Christians set up the village in Hajj Youssef, northeast of the Sudanese capital, but local authorities forced them to leave their homes and set up living quarters in the desert about 10km away. They were transported to the area free of charge, the report added. Sudan’s civil war, which erupted in 1983, pits Christians and animists in the south against the Khartoum government in the Moslem and Arabic north.