Bush fires leave hundreds homeless

Aid agency officials said on Monday they were struggling to mobilise help to hundreds of people left homeless following bush fires in central and northwestern Central African Republic (CAR). "Our aid resources are already stretched to the limit," Marie-Hortense Toulougoussou, the spokesperson of the NGO Caritas, told IRIN on Monday. "We had resources for post-conflict assistance, but they have already been used up." Caritas launched an appeal for help on Sunday. The fires occurred last week, but were only reported on Saturday by Caritas workers who were in the area evaluating the impact of their post-conflict assistance programme. Strong winds in the affected areas fanned the flames that killed at least four people in Bambari, a town 385 km northeast of the capital, Bangui, Toulougousou said. Hundreds of people there are now homeless. In Bossangoa, a town 305 km north of Bangui, at least 400 people are without shelter, Toulougousou added. On Sunday, 44 families in Bossangoa received plastic sheeting for makeshift houses from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the MSF head of mission in Bangui, Luke Beeder, said. They also received blankets and cooking utensils. "But we did not distribute food items except for a few high nutritional biscuits," he said. Large quantities of food stored in the villages were reportedly destroyed, along with seed stocks for the next harvest. "The fires were lit deliberately," state-owned Radio Centrafrique reported on Sunday. "Hunters were trying to draw animals out of the forest so they could shoot them." The government has been advising the public against lighting fires during the dry season from October to March. Fires occur every year at this time.