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afrol.com, 9 February - A convoy by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) today was supposed to reach a part of the estimated 250,000 refugees and displaced Guineans in the southwest of the country, which have been isolated by the fighting between Liberian backed "rebels" and government troops. The convoy was stopped by Guinean troop due to the renewd fighting near Guékédou, retaken by government forces on Tuesday. After abandoning the 250,000 displaced in the last week of January, there have been grave concerns about their security. There have been repeated reports of widespread abuses by Sierra Leonean RUF terrorists against desperate refugees who resorted to walking back home through rebel-infested border areas. Refugees who have crossed areas of Sierra Leone controlled by the RUF speak of rape, abduction and murder. The capture of the border town Guékédou by Guinean government troop on Tuesday 6 February gave hope for renewed UNHCR assistance to the refugees and diplaced trapped in the border area. From its new base in Kissidougou, the UN agency made great efforts to provide help to the displaced. Those efforts were set back temporarily again yesterday, when fighting erupted near Guékédou, forcing the UN agency to suspend for the day an ongoing operation to move thousands of refugees away from insecure border areas to new camps further inland in the Kissidougou area. "We will try again today," said UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond. Yesterday, a UNHCR convoy of several trucks was stopped by Guinean troops about 10 kms before Nyaedou camp, which is 15 kms north of Guékédou. "There are an estimated 30,000 refugees in the camp who need to be moved inland - an operation that is expected to take a month. Several hundred refugees were supposed to be picked up from Nyaedou for transport to a new camp in Albadaria. However, military officials said fighting near Guékédou prevented the relocation convoy from proceeding and it returned to Kissidougou empty," informed Mr Redmond. Later in the day, the fighting around Guékédou halted and a small UNHCR medical and information team was able to travel to Nyaedou, where they found about 1,000 newly arrived refugees. The refugees said they came from Kamayan camp, about 5 kms northwest of Guékédou, and reported that Kamayan had been set on fire - allegedly by neighboring Guinean villagers. The refugees reported hearing heavy fighting in Guékédou yesterday morning.
Guékédou Prefecture, bordering Sierra Leone and Liberia, is the most heavily populated refugee area in the whole of Guinea, with some 295,000 refugees from Sierra Leone and Liberia. The region has been under attack since last September, causing thousands of refugees and local Guineans to flee northwards in search of safety. An estimated 180,000 refugees and 70,000 Guineans are believed still to be stranded in the Parrot's Beak region jutting into Sierra Leone and inaccessible to humanitarian aid. Guékédou itself used to be a vibrant regional centre until "rebels" backed by Liberia and the RUF started their attacks. Now, most parts of the region has been totally depolulated and Guékédou was found a ghost town when recaptured on Tuesday. The UK and US are demanding UN sanctions against Liberia for, among other reasons, its support to the terrorists in Guinea and Sierra Leone and for fuelling what has been called the "West African War". On Wednesday, the US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher announced that his government had given an additional US$ 5 million in emergency aid to the displaced in Guinea. Of this, US$ 3.5 million will support the UNHCR's ongoing relocation of refugees to safe sites within Guinea, Boucher said. The UN High Commissioner for refugees, Ruud Lubbers, tomorrow begins a nine-day mission to five West African states, starting in Guinea. Mr. Lubbers arrives in Conakry on Saturday evening and the next morning is scheduled to travel to the Kissidougou area to see UNHCR’s field operations first-hand. High Commissioner Lubbers will stay in Guinea until Tuesday, when he travels to Freetown, Sierra Leone, for a two-day stay. Then, he will continue to Monrovia, Liberia, to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire and finally to Bamako, Mali. Source: Based on UNHCR and afrol archives
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Kamayan was one of many mid-sized camps in Guékédou Prefecture and was holding 3,600 refugees. "The whereabouts of the other refugees are unknown, along with tens of thousands of others we have been unable to reach in scores of camps in the southwest," says Mr Redmond.
