UNHCR obtains clearance to evacuate humanitarian workers

UNHCR has obtained permission from the Guinean government to evacuate all humanitarian personnel from the southern area of Guekedou, a UNHCR source in Conakry told IRIN on Monday.

The area came under attack from armed men last week and, according to various sources, many people were killed. UNHCR had been without information on its staff there but radio communications have since been re-established. The source said UNHCR staff had been making house calls to check on their colleagues and have been able to obtain information on most if not all of them.

Some have arrived in other towns in the area such as Nzerekore, the source said. Others have reached Conakry.
Another town in the area, Kissidougou, came under attack for about two hours on Sunday morning, but the attackers were beaten back by the military and local residents, Guinean Defence Minister Dorank Assifat Diasseny said.
He denied an earlier claim - made by a dissident group that has claimed responsibility for the attacks - that 137 government soldiers died in Wednesday’s clashes in Guekedou.
AFP reported Interior Minister Moussa Solano as saying that at least 150 “rebels” were killed in Kissidougou.

On Friday, UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said at the United Nations in Geneva that UNHCR was “extremely concerned about the situation in Guinea, particularly in the Guekedou area”.
It said many residents had fled amid fears of further rebel attacks.

Redmond said UNHCR was also extremely worried about the fate of some 400,000 refugees in the wider region of southern Guinea adjacent to Liberia and Sierra Leone. “We once again appeal to the international community to help Guinea implement measures to secure its border areas, particularly those which contain large numbers of refugees,” he said.

All activities in the region have been suspended.

The Guekedou area (Guekedou, Kissidougou and Macenta) has the largest concentration of refugees in Guinea - with 80 percent of the 460,000 Liberians and Sierra Leoneans present in the country, UNHCR said. “We remain very concerned about the refugees - both because of the cross-border attacks as well as local animosity generated by the violence,” Redmond said.