GUINEA-BISSAU-SENEGAL: Some 4,500 displaced by clashes

BISSAU/ZIGUINCHOR, 20 March (IRIN) - Fighting between Guinea Bissau troops and Senegalese separatists has forced more than 4,500 people to flee their homes in the past several days, humanitarian officials said on Monday.

Since Thursday the Guinea Bissau military have been bombarding rebels from Movement of the Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) in the area of Sao Domingo, a city just inside the Guinea Bissau border whose entire civilian population has fled.

Military officials in Guinea Bissau told IRIN at the weekend that the MFDC rebels – said to be from a faction led by hardliner Salif Sadio – are placing mines in the area.

Entire towns and villages on in the border region are deserted after internal fighting within the MFDC spilled into Guinea Bissau last week.

Some 2,500 of those displaced by the fighting have headed north toward the main city of Senegal's Casamance region, Ziguinchor, while another 1,600 are holed up in two Bissau-Guinean towns, Henry Fournier, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Senegal, told IRIN on Monday.

Aid officials say while many of those arriving in Ziguinchor have families they can turn to, residents – still reeling from years of unrest in Casamance – will have a tough time absorbing the displaced.

Meanwhile 493 people sheltering in a makeshift camp in Bourkadie, a few kilometres from the border in Senegal, are dependent on aid, UN World Food Programme and ICRC officials said.

WFP, which has provided emergency food for the displaced, is concerned about the impact of new displacements on its already strained resources in the region. WFP's 2005-06 US $18.6-million recovery programme for the Casamance is only 25 percent funded, a WFP spokesperson said on Monday.

Among the displaced within Guinea Bissau, about 800 people are said to be holed up in the city of Cacheu, with another 820 in the village of Ingore, ICRC's Fournier said.

In Casamance, separated from the rest of Senegal by the sliver of land that makes up the Gambia, MFDC has led a secessionist battle that has waned in recent years. In December 2004 MFDC political leaders signed a peace deal with the Senegalese government. But the Sadio-led faction has repeatedly rejected any such deals.