2,000 new Angolan refugees around Kimvula

The UNHCR on Friday announced that a joint assessment mission with the WFP close to the DRC-Angolan border last week found nearly 2,000 new Angolan refugees scattered in several villages around the Congolese town of Kimvula. “Some of those fleeing suffered gunshot wounds as fighting between UNITA rebels and the Angolan army engulfed their villages [in Angola’s Uige Province],” UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski told journalists in Geneva, Switzerland. The refugees, who are living among the local population in Bas-Congo province, southern DRC, are sharing the scarce resources available in Kimvula, which is hard to access because of bad roads, he added.

The mission found six refugees with bullet wounds in a local hospital and heard refugees say they would not return to Angola without assurances of safety from the Angolan Government, Janowski said. UNHCR is considering moving the refugees away from the border area. Because of difficult road conditions, the team was unable to verify reports of another 1,800 refugees further west in the town of Popokabaka. Several thousand more were reported in the town of Kasongo-Lunda in Bandundu Province.