Up to 40,000 IDPs expected

Some 40,000 people displaced by fighting in northern Sierra Leone are expected to have registered with humanitarian agencies in the next day or two, a spokeswoman of the UN Organisation for
the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) spokeswoman told IRIN on Monday.

Already over 30,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) forced from their homes by the fighting between government troops and rebels have registered in the Mile 91 area and people are still arriving.

"Most people are either staying in public buildings or with host families; we are trying to discourage them from coming to Freetown," Ahunna Eziakunwa said, adding that IDP camps in the capital were already overstretched.

NGOs are mobilising to help the displaced people and discussions are ongoing to examine the various options open to them, Eziakunwa said. "We want to get food and water to them this week."

The IDPs are victims of recent fighting in the northern RUF-stronghold of Makeni between the Sierra Leone Army and Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels.

A Sierra Leone Army (SLA) combat helicopter, which had been droppng leaflets in the Makeni area encouraging the RUF to disarm, showing photographs of victims of RUF atrocities and warning of an impending SLA attack, returned fire when the rebels shot at it, presidential spokesman Septimus Kaikai told IRIN on Monday.

He did not have any details of casualty figures but AP reported two independent eyewitnesses as saying that they saw the bodies of at least 17 civilians in Makeni.