UNHCR suspends deliveries in southwest

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has suspended its food deliveries in southwestern Guinea, following a rebel attack on the garrison town of Nongoa, the agency’s spokeswoman in Guinea told IRIN on Monday.

“We will wait for a few days. The authorities have recommended we do not go there,” Delphine Marie said.
Insurgents have been launching sporadic raids into the Parrot’s Beak, a wedge of Guinean territory that juts into Sierra Leone, since September 2000. They attacked Nongoa, 30 km west of Guekedou, on Thursday as the UNHCR’s implementing partner, Premiere Urgence, was about to make food deliveries to the town. Some 700 refugees fled the town to Mongo, Marie added. No casualties were reported and the government said it controlled Nongoa.

A multiagency UN security assessment team that visited Nongoa just before the attack reported that refugees camps were one-third occupied. The team - comprising employees of the UNHCR, WFP and UNICEF - reported several camps nearer the embattled town of Guekedou abandoned by the Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees.

Refugees at Kolomba, the farthest tip of the Beak, told the security team that their greatest problem was lack of food, UNHCR spokesman Chris Janowski said in Geneva. He said the 30,000 refugees at Kolomba expressed resentment at their months of isolation and that most had sold their belongings to survive. Janowski said food distribution, delayed by lack of logistics and insecurity, was gradually working its way to Kolomba.