Thousands flee Bouake

The number of people fleeing the town of Bouake in central Cote d'Ivoire rose from 100 a day on Wednesday to 2,500 on Friday and 5,000 per day on Saturday and Sunday, according to French army officers in Tiebissou, about 100 km south of Bouake. There were also reports that other people had fled to the nearby town of Didievi. However, the total number of people displaced in central Cote d'Ivoire since September, when insurgents occupied Bouake and towns farther north, was still unclear. A United Nations inter-agency mission which travelled on Thursday from Abidjan to the capital, Yamoussoukro, and then proceeded to Bouake saw hundreds of people walking or boarding the few vehicles available in small towns along the way. Most of the displaced were Ivorians although some 156 people from Burkina Faso sought shelter at the Catholic mission in Tiebissou. They said they had been displaced from their homes in villages around the town. Sources in towns located between Yamoussoukro and Bouake provided figures on displaced persons they had managed to register, noting that most of the displaced were in transit. "The majority of them stop by for up to three days and then move on," one such source told IRIN. In Brobo, about 35 km from Bouake, the French military said some 10,000 people had arrived in the town on Friday. Up to 10 October, the Catholic church in Brobo was assisting 2,000 displaced persons, the parish priest said. Thousands of others sat by the roadside and any available open space as they waited to move on. The number of people passing through Brobo each day between 26 September and 10 October averaged about 4,000 to 5,000, sources said. M'bahiakro, about 90 km from Bouake, received between 2,000 and 2,500 people on 11 October. Officials at the Catholic mission in the town told IRIN they had assisted some 4,739 people between 28 September and 10 October. In all the transit points the most pressing needs were food, health care, protection, water and sanitation. Armed men - who, according to government sources included mutinous soldiers and mercenaries - occupied Bouake after an aborted coup attempt in Abidjan on 19 September. All businesses and offices in Bouake have been closed since then. The market was virtually empty with only a few people selling yams and onions. "We cannot buy anything because we have no money," a resident told IRIN."Most of us are just thinking of how to leave this place because life is becoming impossible." The central hospital was operating on skeleton staff and there was no food for the patients. "We were forced to start cooking only for the staff of 80 but we will close the kitchen this evening [Saturday] because we have run out of stock," said a staff member. Humanitarian agencies were responding by providing medicines and food. The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Sunday it had airlifted a tonne of high-protein biscuits to Yamoussoukro in a bid to bring urgently needed food rations to the displaced. The supplies, WFP said, came from humanitarian stocks in Guinea. It said the biscuits were essential during the first days of displacement to avoid malnutrition among women and children in particular. The agency planned to establish a logistics base in Yamoussoukro so as to better respond to the "unfolding crisis in the northern areas of the country". WFP also said more than 2,000 displaced persons in Yamoussoukro and areas around Bouake had received "urgently needed" food rations and that the International Committee of the Red Cross had begun distributing WFP food aid to vulnerable groups in Bouake itself on Sunday.