Evacuation of trapped refugees in Guinea suffers setback

Spokesman Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva the fighting near the embattled town of Gueckedou on Thursday forced UNHCR aid workers to suspend for the day an ongoing operating to move thousands of refugees away from insecure border areas to new camps further inland.

The Gueckedou prefecture bordering on 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 residents to flee north.

An estimated 180,000 refugees and 70,000 Guineans are believed to be stranded at the Parrot's Beak region jutting into Sierra Leone and inaccessible to humanitarian aid.

The new UNHCR Ruud Lubbers will fly to Guinea at the start of a five-nation Western African tour Saturday in a bid to salvage the agency's humanitarian operation, said to be in danger of collapsing.

Lubbers will also will visit Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Mali and will hold talks with leaders of the Economic Commission of Western African States (ECOWAS) in Conakry on the refugee drama in West Africa described earlier by another UNHCR official as "the most serious in the world".

Redmond said a UNHCR convoy of several tucks was stopped by Guinean troops about 10 kilometres away from Nyaedou camp, sited 15 kilometres north of Gueckedou, and returned empty.

About 30,000 refugees at the camp are awaiting evacuation, an operation that is expected to take one month.

Since the start of the operation Tuesday 675 refugees have been moved from the camp, Redmond said.

The said the frightened refugees complained that the relocation was too slow.

As of Friday the UNHCR would use 15 trucks to for the transportation of about 1,000 refugees daily on the six-hour journey to a camp in Albadaria which offers shelter, water and sanitation facilities. Two more camps are under construction in the same region, Redmond said.

(dpa)