Guinea refugee panic

Refugees came from Liberia and Sierra Leone

By West Africa correspondent Mark Doyle

Thousands of terrified refugees were on the move in southern Guinea on Friday to escape fighting - and rumours of fighting - between government and rebel forces.

A big mess

UN official in Guinea

Guinea hosts almost 500,000 refugees who fled from wars in neighbouring Sierra Leone and Liberia but who are now caught up in the war in southern Guinea.

Many of these people are cut off by the conflict and have not received food aid for five months.

Senior officials from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, described the situation as the most serious refugee drama in the world today.

It is not clear what triggered the latest panic among the refugees in southern Guinea but their predicament trapped in a war zone with very little food is so fragile that a mere rumour of fighting could have started them moving.

Convoy

On Friday, the UN refugee agency sent a convoy of trucks to move about 1,000 refugees from a camp just north of the combat zone to a safer location in central Guinea.

UN agencies have had difficulty getting food to the refufees

But according to UNHCR workers, the trucks filled up quickly with far more than 1,000 people.

When they started to move out, up to 3,000 other refugees, terrified they were being left alone, started walking along the road.

This was just one confirmed incident and no one knows for certain how many other refugees have moved in this way.

Most of the refugees in the area have no regular food supplies, no decent shelter and no security.

A senior UN official told me from southern Guinea that the situation was, in her words, "a big mess".