Refugee agency says displaced figures unclear

In Geneva on Tuesday, UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said it was not clear how many people had been internally displaced by the fighting in Eritrea. President had said that day that up to one million people were affected by the fighting. The Eritrean authorities had earlier spoken of 550,000 people displaced, but Janowski said this figure presumably included some 300,000 displaced by drought and earlier bouts of the fighting. He said the Eritrean authorities had asked international agencies to mount a cross-border operation from Sudan to assist IDPs around the western Eritrean town of Tesseney, in order to prevent them from fleeing into Sudan. On Tuesday, the UNHCR Representative in Sudan, Roman Urasa, told IRIN that 50,000 displaced Eritreans were waiting on the Eritrean side of the border.