New refugees from Senegal

Tension in Casamance, southern Senegal, continues to drive people into neighbouring Gambia, UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond reported on Friday in Geneva. He said more than 200 refugees arrived this week in villages along Gambia’s southern border. This brought to more than 2,500 the number of people who have fled to The Gambia since fighting flared up in mid-May between Senegalese government forces and the Mouvement des forces democratiques de Casamance (MFDC). [The MFDC has been fighting since 1982 for self-rule for Casamance.] Refugees and local residents in Gambian border villages told UNHCR staff on Thursday they had heard gunshots across the border, which could herald another outflow, Redmond said. A woman who arrived this week from Tanding in northern Casamance said Senegalese soldiers burned almost all the houses in her village as they pursued the rebels, he added. Many of the refugees who arrived in The Gambia this week said they fled their homes when they saw a military aircraft patrolling the area. They feared a repeat of an air raid that allegedly took place several days earlier and in which, refugee elders told a UNHCR team, many civilians were killed. They also said five men who had gone back to check on their families and livestock, were arrested. Most of the villages along the border cannot accommodate the new arrivals, some of whom are now living under trees, UNHCR said. However, the bulk of the refugees have declined to move to UNHCR’s transit camp at Kwinella, some 70 km north of the border. UNHCR is caring for 12,400 refugees in The Gambia, including 1,675 Senegalese who arrived before the recent upsurge in fighting.