Refugees fleeing the Chadian capital N’djamena are still swamping border towns in Cameroon and thousands have started queuing at Nigerian border posts, said officials and refugees. However, N’djamena residents say overall, the flow of refugees has reduced since 4 February when reports from the city suggested the streets were clogged with residents taking advantage of a lull after two days of street fighting between the army and anti-government rebels to flee across the river into neighbouring Cameroon.
Refugees fleeing the Chadian capital N’djamena are still swamping border towns in Cameroon and thousands have started queuing at Nigerian border posts, said officials and refugees. However, N’djamena residents say overall, the flow of refugees has reduced since 4 February when reports from the city suggested the streets were clogged with residents taking advantage of a lull after two days of street fighting between the army and anti-government rebels to flee across the river into neighbouring Cameroon.
“Things have really calmed down since yesterday,” an IRIN correspondent in N’djamena told commented by telephone in the afternoon of 5 February. “People are still leaving but it’s nothing like before.” Aid agencies with staff in Kousseri, the closest town in Cameroon to N’djamena, said on 5 February large numbers of N’djamena residents were nonetheless still flowing over the bridge from N’djamena into the Cameroonian border town Kousseri.
“From what our people say it is a very confusing situation in Kousseri with people arriving on foot, by car, and on bicycles,” said Paul Sitnam, humanitarian affairs officer with the non-governmental organisation World Vision, which has staff working in Kousseri and N’djamena.
Although the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) says only 20,000 refugees have been registered in Cameroon so far, some international aid agencies say they are rushing staff and supplies to Cameroon to deal with what some of them estimate could be between 300,000 and 500,000 Chadians taking refuge in Kousseri – approximately half the population of N’djamena.
UNHCR said in a statement that emergency relief supplies enough for 14,000 people will start arriving in Kousseri later this week, and refugees are being moved to a larger campsite away from the border large enough to accommodate 100,000 people.
Refugees, mostly women, children and the elderly, also started arriving at the Nigerian border with Chad at Fotokol to the northwest of N’djamena on 4 February, and continued to arrive on 5 February.
“We seized the opportunity offered by the lull in fighting in N’djamena to leave at 8:00 am yesterday because we are afraid fighting can resume at any moment since the rebels said they have only made a tactical retreat to the outskirts to re-strategise,” said Ismail Hamissou, a refugee who fled to Fokotol with his wife and 62-year old mother .
Refugees said they left behind all their possessions in N’djamena in the frantic effort to escape the violence. “Imagine living these days amidst street battle, aerial bombardment of rebel positions by government forces with the rebels responding with artillery fire. I shivered when I saw the decomposing bodies littering the streets of N’djamena while I was leaving”, Iddris, whose textile shop was looted and burned, said.
