Insecurity blocks food deliveries, WFP says

The UN World Food Programme said on Friday it had been unable to deliver food to thousands of refugees in the south of Guinea because of fighting in the so-called Parrot’s Beak over the last three weeks. “WFP is extremely concerned about the fate of tens of thousands of mostly Sierra Leonean refugees, previously sheltered in refugee camps in the area,” Ramin Rafirasme, the WFP regional spokesman, said in Abidjan. On 8 March, he said, insurgents attacked the town of Nongoa, killing 39 people and looting 190 mt of WFP food. Up to early this year, the area sheltered an estimated 140,000 refugees in different camps. A recent security mission to the area found about 30,000 refugees in the Kolomba camp, near the Sierra Leonean border, but the whereabouts of many others remain uncertain, Rafirasme said. So far, he said, 23,000 refugees had fled the Parrot’s Beak and were at the UNHCR’s Kountaya camp in Albadaria, some 160 km north of Guekedou. Another 12,000 refugees were at the Katkama transit point awaiting their transfer to Albadaria. WFP continues to deliver relief items to both locations. WFP is helping at least 100,000 refugees, mostly Sierra Leoneans, and 160,000 Guineans displaced by the fighting, he said.