Most camps in volatile area closed

Most refugee camps on the eastern side of Guinea’s battle-scared Parrot’s Beak area are now empty and their inmates have been sent to transit facilities at Katkama, further north, UNHCR reported on Tuesday. “In one of the camps, local villagers began burning some of the refugee shelters even as refugees boarded trucks,” the agency reported. On Saturday, 54 trucks took some 3,000 refugees from a string of camps on the eastern side or the Beak, a finger of territory that thrusts into eastern Sierra Leone. At least 6,000 refugees from the Beak are at Katkama, awaiting relocation to safer areas well north of the border. The border area around the Beak has been the scene of fierce fighting since September between insurgents from Sierra Leone and the Guinean army. Thousands of mostly Sierra Leonean refugees fled, but others were trapped in the Beak. Meanwhile, in Forecariah, southeast of the Guinean capital, Conakry, some 10,000 Sierra Leonean refugees in makeshift accommodation are being offered a choice of transfer farther inland or shipment home by boat in an operation being undertaken by the International Organization for Migration.