Attacks displace up to 20,000 Central Africans - UN
05 Jun 2007 12:21:00 GMT Source: Reuters
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People displaced by fighting in Central African Republic watch as U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes pays a visit to their village.
REUTERS/Michael Kamber
BANGUI, June 5 (Reuters) - Up to 20,000 people fled their homes in Central African Republic last week when the army torched hundreds of houses after a rebel attack, U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Tuesday, quoting local relief workers.
The northwest of the former French colony has seen waves of violence in the past two years, with sporadic rebel attacks and counter-raids by government troops who have burnt thousands of straw-thatched mud houses trying to flush out rebels.
Humanitarian agencies reckon some 290,000 civilians from northern Central African Republic have been forcibly displaced in the past 18 months, including 78,000 who have crossed into neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Sudan.
Last week's violence in the town of Ngaoundaye, not far from the borders of Cameroon and Chad, sent nearly 300 people fleeing across the border into Chad, including men with bullet wounds, the UNHCR said.
It gave no indication of any death toll.
"After initial rebel attacks on Ngaoundaye, government forces reportedly entered the town and burned 540 houses, forcing most of the estimated 3,000 to 4,000 inhabitants to flee their homes," the Geneva-based agency said in a briefing note.
"The area remains insecure and inaccessible to U.N. staff. It is difficult to get precise information but initial reports from humanitarian workers on the ground indicate that up to 20,000 people might be displaced in the area," it said.
Officials in the area could not be reached for comment.
Government officials have acknowledged previous raids by the army and the burning of civilians' houses by soldiers trying to quell the rebellion.
Central African Republic has been drawn into a regional vortex of violence spreading west from Sudan's Darfur region, where Sudanese government forces and allied militias have fought rebels for four years in what Washington has branded genocide -- a charge Khartoum rejects.
Violence has forced hundreds of thousands of civilians from Darfur, Chad and Central African Republic to flee to live rough in the bush or escape across international borders for safety.
Adding to the strife in northern Central African Republic, rebel forces crossed the border from Sudan late last year and seized a swathe of territory around the northeastern town of Birao before being fought off by pro-government forces backed by French fighter planes and special forces.
