RUF rebels kill two in border village

Sierra Leonean rebels shot dead two villagers and burned their bodies in an attack on Dinde, a village in the west Guinean
district of Tassin, UNHCR reported officials in the area's main town, Forecariah, as saying.

The 15 May attack was the fourth this year in the border prefecture of Forecariah, which includes Tassin, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement on Tuesday. The authorities in Forecariah said the attackers also burned huts and stole a large quantity of food stocks and cattle from Dinde.

The raid has renewed distrust among villagers towards Sierra Leonean refugees in a nearby camp in Tassin, which was not attacked. Area residents suspect the refugees of complicity with the rebels, according to the press release.

"These rebel attacks do not make our job easy at all," Abou Moussa, UNHCR's regional director for West and Central Africa, said in the statement.

According to Moussa, a rebel attack on 20 April in Moola, some 30 km from the border, had already created tension between refugees and local villagers, who reacted by burning 221 huts at Moola refugee camp, also in Forecariah. "We fear that the same thing may happen again," Moussa said.

There are some 60,000 Sierra Leonean refugees in the seven camps in Forecariah, southeast of Conakry.

An estimated 350,000 Sierra Leoneans are registered as refugees in Guinea, UNHCR said.