Umm Dreiga

del.icio.us del.icio.us
Digg Digg
Furl Furl
Reddit Reddit
Rojo Rojo
Add to OnlyWire

Umm Dreiga (Arabic: أم دريجة‎) (or Oum Dreiga) is an oasis town in the Río de Oro area of Western Sahara.

It served as a shelter for Sahrawi refugees in late 1975 and early 1976, after the Moroccan and Mauritanian invasion of Western Sahara (then known as Spanish Sahara). In February 1976, the Moroccan Air Force used napalm and fragmentation bombs[1] against the refugee columns, causing hundreds of casualties and international protest. The refugees then moved on through the Sahara desert towards Tindouf, Algeria, where most of them remain in refugee camps today.

The town saw several battles during the 1975-81 war between the Polisario front and the Army of Morocco, but ultimately ended up in Moroccan-held parts, to the west of the Moroccan Wall, thus included in what Morocco terms its "Southern Provinces".

This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.