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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC-CONGO: UN worried by the volatile situation in CAR

NAIROBI, 11 March 2003 (IRIN) - The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is "extremely worried" by the volatile situation in the Central African Republic (CAR), UN News reported on Friday. The UN agency reported that a new influx of asylum seekers from the CAR had entered the Republic of Congo (ROC).

The UNHCR has dispatched a team to verify reports of the arrival of 600 Central Africans at the small town of Betikoumba in the ROC, UN News said, adding that in February, some 200 Central Africans had fled fighting from areas south of the CAR capital, Bangui, into Betikoumba.

UN News quoted NGOs working in Betikoumba as saying that new refugees had started arriving on Thursday morning, following a night of fighting in nearby CAR town of Mongoumba, on the border junction between the CAR, the ROC and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The Wednesday night violence followed a five-day standoff between government troops and their Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC) allies from the DRC. The CAR minister of state for the interior, Jacquesson Mazette, told IRIN on Friday that there had been a misunderstanding between the government troops and the MLC forces, but it had been settled.

Witnesses said the standoff began on 2 March when government troops in Mongoumba, 189 km south of the capital, Bangui, stopped two river boats carrying MLC militiamen withdrawing from the CAR with goods they had looted. The troops seized the boats, then disarmed and arrested the passengers.

After being released, the militiamen crossed the River Oubangui for the DRC, but returned on Wednesday with reinforcements. They then looted the homes of the town’s 10,000 residents and its Roman Catholic mission. "Ten thousand people have run away into the bush and to Betou," Alphonse Kossi, a priest and the national executive secretary-general of Catholic relief agency, Caritas, told IRIN on Friday.

Instability inside CAR had also driven thousands of people into neighbouring Chad, UN News reported. By the middle of last week, the number of new arrivals in southern Chad had increased to 26,000, though daily numbers had subsided to between 100 and 150 people a day.

Themes: (IRIN) Refugees/IDPs

[ENDS]

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