Red Cross helps clean up devastated town

Staff of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and volunteers from the Guinean Red Cross society began to clean up the southern town of Guekedou on 24 March, the ICRC said on Friday. The town was devastated during fighting in the past three months between insurgents and government forces in parts of southern Guinea. Its population fled northward and it is now practically empty, ICRC said in the latest issue of its bulletin, ICRC News. It said a joint ICRC/Guinean Red Cross team from Kissidougou, 80km away, helped clean the town’s hospital, which had been ransacked, and had been cleaning other sites. It said action had had to be taken because of the risk of disease from the dead bodies of combatants and civilians thrown into a nearby river during the fighting in the town.