UNHCR rushes aid to Caxito’s Congolese refugees

The UNHCR has had to rush emergency supplies to about 350 Congolese refugees who fled a UNITA attack on Caxito in Bengo province on 5 May. UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said in Geneva on Friday that field workers who arrived at a “makeshift, mosquito-infested” camp about 40 km outside Luanda on Wednesday had transferred the 130 families they found there to higher ground. Four sick refugees were evacuated to a hospital in the capital Luanda. The organisation had also distributed water, food, plastic sheeting, blankets and basic household supplies, Redmond said.

Many of the refugees - mainly women and children - had slept out in the open since the attack drove them from their Boa Esperanca camp, and were exhausted after spending more than four days on the road, according to Redmond. He also said that when aid officials first reached the village a day after the attack, they found nearly 3,000 Angolans who had fled the same attack. Most of them had since moved in with friends and family in Luanda or had gone to a nearby camp for internally displaced persons in Vidrol, he said.

UNHCR representative in Angola, Guy Ouellet, told IRIN on Monday that the Congolese refugees were still at the camp. The agency was monitoring the situation and was waiting for Caxito, about 55 km northeast of Luanda, to be declared safe before returning the refugees to Boa Esperanca. In its latest emergency report released on Friday, the WFP said that tension in the province had resulted in the suspension of humanitarian activities.

About 60 Angolan children and a teacher were abducted from Children’s Town, a home for children run by Danish NGO ADPP, during the same attack. The home is about 10 km outside Caxito. In spite of widespread pleas for their release, none of the children have been seen since the attack. In addition to a number of civilian casualties, four humanitarian workers were killed in the attack - an Angolan doctor working with the Italian organisation COSV, two teachers working for the ADPP and one of their support workers.