ICRC, Red Cross begin aid distribution

Up to 20,000 war-displaced people in northwestern Central African Republic (CAR) are set to benefit from the distribution of relief aid begun on Wednesday by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the CAR Red Cross, an official said. "At least 100 villages around the towns of Markounda, Paoua and Batangafo will benefit from the relief operations," Alphonse Zarambaud, the programme coordinator of the CAR Red Cross, said in Bangui, the capital. The relief items for distribution include 8,000 tarpaulins, 24,000 blankets, 24,000 mats, 4,000 buckets and eight tonnes of soap. The cost of the month-long relief operation was not disclosed. "The operation begins today in Markounda as the lorries hired for this purpose have already arrived," Noel Audhasse Ngaoza, an ICRC information officer, said on Wednesday. Zarambaud said Red Cross volunteers would help in the distribution and that Médecines Sans Frontières (MSF) would provide medical aid to the displaced during the distribution. He said the decision to begin the relief operations in Markounda was motivated by climatic conditions. "We are in the rainy season and the operations should begin there before roads get affected," he said. This relief operation follows another one carried out in Markounda in April when the Italian international NGO COOPI, MSF and the Roman Catholic NGO Caritas International distributed food aid to the displaced in Markounda. The relief operations in the northwest follow reports by UN agencies that thousands of people were in dire need of help. "The unrest in the northwest has displaced about 50,000 people who need assistance in food and non-food items and medicine," Bruno Geddo, the delegate of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to the CAR, said on 19 June. The displaced are living in the bush and surviving on wild roots and are exposed to malaria and waterborne diseases. Northwestern CAR, close to the Chadian border, has experienced fighting since late September 2005. Clashes between the armed groups and the regular army in Markounda led to the death of two government soldiers on 27 September 2005. On 1 December, another attack claimed by a group calling itself the Mouvement patriotique pour la renaissance du peuple Centrafricain, shook the town of Bozoum, and the army consequently suffered a loss of equipment. On 29 January, 104 people died as a result of fighting between rebels and government troops in the town of Paoua. Most were civilians killed by members of the presidential guard, following claims that they had collaborated with rebels operating in the region. Rebel activity and armed banditry in the northwest have made life unbearable since 2002 when the current president, François Bozize, started a rebellion that culminated in the ousting of President Ange-Félix Patassé in March 2003. Since then, at least 40,000 people have fled the country to seek refuge in neighbouring Chad and Cameroon. jb/js/os