UNHCR mission in the west

A team of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is in western Cote d'Ivoire to try and re-establish contact with refugees stranded in and around an area affected by fighting between loyalist forces and two new rebel groups, a UNHCR official told IRIN on Friday. The team, which travelled to the western town of Guiglo on Wednesday, was expected on Friday in nearby Nicla camp. According to a UNHCR statement on Thursday, the team's mission includes verifying reports that more refugees fleeing the fighting had sought refuge at Nicla. The camp is located in the Zone d'accueil des refugies (ZAR - Refugee zone), an area along Cote d'Ivoire's border with Liberia. The UNHCR official said Nicla had between 4,000 to 5,000 refugees prior to the outbreak of fighting in western Cote d'Ivoire on 28 November. On Thursday the team received information from Caritas officials in Nicla that more people had arrived at the camp and that food was one of the immediate needs, the official added. UNHCR said the refugees in the camp would be the first to be evacuated from the ZAR, which has a refugee population of 72,000, mostly Liberians. These include about 45,000 people in the northern part of the ZAR who could not be reached for the past two weeks because of the fighting. UNHCR has been unable to contact refugees in the towns of Danane and Toulepleu: travel to both locations is restricted by the Ivorian military and UN internal security measures, it said. Many people have already fled to Liberia. By Thursday, some 42,000 persons had reached that country's eastern counties, including 28,000 Liberian returnees and 14,000 Ivorian refugees, UNHCR said, adding that the proportion of Ivorian refugees was increasing by the day. The recent arrivals were scattered along the border in Nimba, Grand Geddeh and Maryland counties. Most of the Ivorians, UNHCR noted, had sought shelter with relatives or host families and hoped to be able to return to Cote d'Ivoire soon. Farther north, several thousand Ivorian refugees and Guinean migrants have entered Guinea in the past two weeks. A mutiny on 19 September marked the beginning of a rebellion that has divided Cote d'Ivoire in two, with the south in the government's hand and the north controlled by the rebel Mouvement patriotique de Cote d'Ivoire (MPCI). Two new rebel groups emerged in the west on 28 November. These are the Movement for Peace and Justice (MPJ) and Ivorian Popular Movement of the Great West (MPIGO). Meanwhile, UNHCR said another team left this week for the southwestern town of San Pedro to start identifying potential sites for a transit centre and to make contact with port and airport authorities.