Refugees head home from Guinea

The first of around 150,000 Liberians who are to be repatriated from Guinea, where some spent more than a decade in camps, headed home on Wednesday, a UNHCR spokeswoman said. Dariatou Tounkara told IRIN that the 318 men, women and children riding UNHCR trucks for home crossed the border at Lola in southern Guinea. Most were from a camp in Leine and will be resettled in Bong county in Liberia. Tounkara, speaking by telephone from Lola, said the group was the largest single one repatriated since October, the start of the homecoming for the more than half a million people who were internally displaced or who fled Liberia during its 14-year war. Guinea has been the biggest recipient of refugees from Liberia and at one point hosted over 500,000. Their repatriation, to be followed by a new convoy next week, had been delayed a week due to a sudden flareup of violence in Monrovia 10 days ago, the worst unrest to hit the country since civil war ended in 2003. The refugee returns underline the country’s new move towards peace, marked by last week’s agreement by the three former warring factions to disband their forces. A nationwide disarmament programme that has seen 100,000 fighters lay down arms ended on 31 October in much of Liberia but is still under way in other parts of the country.