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Hundreds More Flee As Conflict Escalates, UN Agency Says

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
NEWS
October 2, 2002
Posted to the web October 2, 2002
Nairobi
A recent influx of some 900 Burundians into Tanzania brings refugee arrivals to
at least 3,000 in September, the office of UN High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) reported on Tuesday. It said this represented a nearly a 10-fold
increase from August.
Most of the refugees had fled "after a period of internal displacement", the
agency reported, while others who had previously been in Tanzanian refugee
camps and gone home only to find themselves having to flee the current fighting
between government and rebel forces.
A UNHCR report from Kibondo, Tanzania, near the border with Burundi, said many
of the new arrivals were in poor health, "with children showing signs of
malnutrition". The refugees had said the fighting between the army and the
rebels had escalated, and that some soldiers had burnt down their homes after
accusing them of complicity with the rebels.
Meanwhile, the flow of Burundian returnees had dropped dramatically, the UNHCR
spokesman, Kris Janowski, said on Tuesday in Geneva. In recent weeks, he said,
an average of 600 refugees had gone home each week, compared to up to 1,500 per
week a few months ago. At least 45,000 Burundian refugees have returned home
since the beginning of the year, 25,000 of them with UNHCR help.
The agency has maintained that it is only facilitating the return of refugees
to relatively safe parts of northern Burundi. Tanzania was hosting some 350,000
Burundian refugees in camps, UNHCR reported, with nearly 500,000 others living
on their own outside the camps.

   

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