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Source: AlertNet
Date: 01 Dec 2009
Written by: George Fominyen
DAKAR, (AlertNet) – Several international aid groups operating in north eastern Central African Republic (CAR) have asked their staff to retreat to the capital Bangui after recent clashes between rebels and government forces and the abduction of a number of aid workers, humanitarian officials have said.
November was a difficult month for relief agencies working in CAR with two aid workers of the France-based Triangle organisation kidnapped in Birao, about 800 km (500 miles) from Bangui.
A previously unknown group, African Free Eagles, told Reuters on Monday that it is holding the Triangle workers as well as a French agronomist working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), who was abducted in early November in Chad.
The group said it was targeting French nationals to try to force France to change its policies towards Africa.
“We have closed the base in Birao and asked the two other expatriate staff who were not kidnapped as well as all five expatriates who were working in our project in the Haut Kotto province to return to Bangui,” Olivier Routeau, the head of Triangle in the Central African Republic told AlertNet.
Another French aid group Comite d’Aide Medical, which was also targeted in Birao, has suspended its activities in the area.
The African Free Eagles has said France should use its influence in the continent to push Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur, the Darfur rebel leader living in Paris, to attend Sudanese peace talks. The group also wants France to force Chadian President Idriss Deby and opposition leaders to talk.
ATTACK ON NDELE
French aid groups Solidarite and Aide Medicale International (AMI), and the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) temporarily suspended operations in Ndele, 502 km (312 miles) from Bangui, after clashes between rebels and government forces in the town last week, a United Nations official said on Monday.
“They are not withdrawing from CAR. They are just carrying out post-attack evacuation,” Jean-Sebastien Munie, the head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the country, told AlertNet by telephone.
Rebels of the Patriotic Convention for Justice and Peace (CPJP) attacked and briefly took over Ndele last week before regular forces reinstated their control over the town, which some humanitarian groups use as a base.
Munie said the town’s main hospital that is supported by aid groups had been closed because of the attack.
The U.N., which has maintained its presence in Ndele, flew in fresh staff from Bangui on Monday to replace those who were in the town during the fighting. The International Medical Corps also remains in Ndele.
But about 75 percent of the town of 12,000 people is empty. Markets are closed and those who remain are confined to their homes.
Most of the population is in the bush nearby and OCHA said there were unconfirmed reports that there are people on the road to the Chadian border.
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