More refugees continue to arrive in southwest, UNHCR says

A significant number of people fleeing war-torn Liberia has continued to arrive in the southwest of Cote d'Ivoire through 13 border crossing points, bringing the number of those who have crossed to at least 15,000 in the past week, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Tuesday. UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski told reporters in Geneva that the new arrivals comprised of Liberians, Ivorian returnees unable to return to their place of origin and West African nationals who had been living in Cote d'Ivoire and had initially fled to Liberia in the wake of the Ivorian conflict. In one village, Yeoli, north of Prollo on the Cavaly River, some 1,300 new arrivals were reported last week, Janowski said. In another small village near Nero, to which UNHCR does not have access some 500 new arrivals were reported on 25 May. There are several other villages to the north that are likely to have received significant numbers of arrivals, but the agency has so far not been able to travel to any of them, he said. In the Ivorian southwestern town of Tabou, the UNHCR transit centre initially built for 700 people, was currently housing more than 2,400 people, he said. Most of the other arrivals had made their way into rural villages where they were believed to be integrating with the local population. The Ivorian government and UNHCR were discussing the possibility of building a refugee camp in Tabou for those refugees who remain in town, he said. In the mean time, a training centre operated by the German agency GTZ would be used as a temporary transit centre. He said the government had requested that UNHCR transport and assist returning Ivorians at a separate transit centre. Meanwhile, a chartered plane carrying specialised nutrition items, including therapeutic milk and high calaorie biscuits with increased nutritional value and other medical items, left Brussels on Wednesday for the western Ivorian town of Man to help children facing the risk of malnutrition. Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) said in a statement on Wednesday that the supplies would go to the regional hospital in Man where it had just opened a therapeutic feeding centre (TFC). After only one week, it said, the centre had admitted more than 60 severely malnourished children. Western Cote d'Ivoire has in the past few months suffered continuing attacks against civilians and further population displacement, eight months after the current Ivorian conflict started. Many people have fled into the bush to hide from the violence and stayed there for weeks. Both Ivorian and Liberian rebels are involved in the fighting the region. Peacekeepers are however due to deployed there. On Tuesday, the World Food Programme launched an appeal for US $16 million to fund a new emergency operation to assist more than 500,000 people in various parts of Cote d'Ivoire, particularly in the west, for the next eight months.