- Title: GUINEA: TERRIFIED VILLAGERS FLEE LATEST FIGHTING.
- Date: 10th February 2001
- Summary: NEAR GUECKEDOU, GUINEA (FEBRUARY 9, 2001) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. GV: GUINEAN VILLAGERS FLEEING FROM GUECKEDOU (3 SHOTS) 0.16 2. CU: SOUNDBITE (French) DAVID IRANDONOU SAYING: It is the rebels (who are attacking Guekedou). I even lost a friend who was there with me, but stayed behind. He took a bullet." 0.25 3. LV: EMPTY ROAD WITH SOUND
- Embargoed: 25th February 2001 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: NEAR GUECKEDOU AND CAMP NYAEDOU REFUGEE CAMP, GUINEA
- Country: Guinea
- Reuters ID: LVA61VHN7E2REHQ7WR3D8J1YW7S0
- Story Text: Fresh fighting in southern Guinea drove thousands of
terrified refugees to flee their camp on Friday (February 9),
further obstructing United Nations efforts to ease what it
calls the world's worst refugee crisis.
United Nations aid workers struggled on Saturday
(February 10) to rescue tens of thousands of terrified
refugees caught in a fresh wave of fighting in southern
Guinea.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
refugee agency, which has called the Guinean crisis its worst
humanitarian emergency, estimated that between five and ten
thousand people who fled a refugee camp in panic on Friday had
formed a human column several kilometers long on the road to
Kissidougou, where UNHCR operations are based.
They were being stopped by Guinean troops who have set up
a roadblock near a strategic bridge.
Another 15,000 to 20,000 refugees managed to reach the
nearby abandoned camp of Katkama overnight, while an
unspecified number was unaccounted for.
"It seems that the rest have dispersed into the forest,"
Renata Dubini, UNHCR head of station in Kissidougou, told
Reuters.
Panic spread among refugees at the Nyaedou camp after a
UNHCR convoy was turned back from Gueckedou, some 17 km (11
miles) south of the camp, because of renewed fighting there
between government troops and rebels.
Reuters reporters at the scene said the majority of the
camp's estimated 30,000 refugees had fled on foot.
There were no reports of fresh clashes on Saturday, and
aid workers hoped they could regroup as many refugees as
possible to truck them to a safer location north of
Kissidougou.
Military sources said on Friday government troops, who had
routed rebels in Gueckedou in a fierce battle earlier in the
week, were now in defensive positions and had called for
reinforcements.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees from civil war in Sierra
Leone and Liberia have been caught up in months of bloody
border attacks in the area of Guinea close to the Sierra Leone
and Liberian borders.
The fighting has cut off many camps from outside aid.
Guinea says Liberian and Sierra Leonean rebels are helping
Guinean dissidents launch the attacks, in which hundreds of
people have died since early September. Liberia in turn
accuses Guinea of harbouring rebels who attack across its
border.
Liberian and Sierra Leonean refugees have come under
attack from Guineans who blame them for the cross-border
raids.
U.N. staff said people at Nyaedou had been nervous since
being told by other refugees that Guinean villagers had
torched a nearby camp.
The Gueckedou area is home to most of the refugees, with
some 295,000 people from Sierra Leone and Liberia.
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers, a former
Dutch prime minister who assumed the post last month, was
flying to the region on Saturday to visit camps and seek
assurances from local leaders that aid workers will be safe.
Lubbers's deputy Soren Jessen-Petersen said on Thursday
that insecurity was threatening the agency's entire operation
in Guinea.
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