UNHCR investigates reported refugee movements

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is to send a mission on Saturday to investigate reports that Sierra Leonean refugees have been displaced by fighting in Lofa County, northwest Liberia, a UNHCR source in Monrovia told IRIN. "We have heard reports of refugees on the move but we have been unable to verify these reports ourselves since the last of our staff left Lofa County on Thursday," the source said. Reports said that refugees were moving from the northern part of Lofa to an area near Camp Alpha in the south of the county. The UNHCR mission will look into these reports. The source said another UNHCR team travelled on Friday to Bo Waterside, a border town northwest of Monrovia to investigate reports of arrivals there. UNHCR and other relief workers were forced to pull out of Lofa County when fighting began last week between government troops and dissidents. Some 500 refugees were reportedly moving from the Kolahun area to Vahun further south, local sources said. There are 48,000 Sierra Leonean refugees in Lofa County, 35,000 of whom were being assisted by the UNHCR, according to the latest information from the UN agency. Some 20,000 were living in a camp in Kolahun, some 15,000 were in Vahun and most of the others were in villages along the border. Another 41,000 Sierra Leonean refugees live in other parts of Liberia, giving a total of 89,000. Three WFP national staff still missing The WFP in Monrovia said on Friday that three of six members of its staff who had been missing had reached Monrovia. The remaining three Liberian aid workers are believed to be somewhere between Lofa County and the capital. The six went missing after fighting broke out between government and rebel forces on 10 August in Kolahun in Lofa County.