KOUSSERI/NDJAMENA, 7 February 2008 (IRIN) - Churches, houses and hospitals are still filled to capacity in this Cameroonian border town on the banks of the Chari River where between 20 and 30,000 Chadians fled to when fighting broke out in N'djamena on 2 February.

Although home is just a short walk away over an iron bridge that crosses the river and back into Chadian territory, the refugees prefer to watch and wait to see if calm will hold at home. The estimated 3,000 rebels who launched an assault against the city are still unaccounted for.

"I'm too scared that the rebels will come back," said Alfred Pour Innocent Nodjigoto, who with his wife joined a flood of refugees moving from N'djamena to Kousseri on Monday, during what was expected to just be a lull not a halt in the street fighting between rebels and the army.

"I saw all the dead bodies in the streets of N'djamena just rotting in the sun. Kousseri is a refuge where we can wait this out – we will go back but not yet," he said.

Witch-hunt feared

In N'djamena, conditions are returning to normal with corpses being cleared away and shops reopening their shutters, although the government has imposed a curfew from 20.30-06.00.

However, a claim by Chad's President Idriss Deby in comments to journalists on 6 February that some of the rebels who launched the attack had snuck back into N'djamena and crossed into Cameroon has raised fears that civilians may be targeted in the wake of the fighting.

Tawanda Hondora, Deputy Africa Director at Amnesty International, said in a statement on 7 February that the London-based human rights watchdog is "extremely concerned" that the Chadian authorities are "about to start a major witch-hunt against people perceived as belonging to the armed opposition groups".

Amnesty's statement said it had received information of the Chadian army executing members of the same ethnic community which is believed to have carried out the attacks on N'djamena, dumping the bodies in the Chari River.

"Amnesty International has received information suggesting that the Chadian army will continue to carry out illegal arrests of civilians and members of civil society including journalists and human rights defenders," the statement said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which is liaising with prisoners of war in Chad, has confirmed in a separate statement that several members of the civil opposition in N'djamena were arrested in the wake of the weekend's attacks.

Aid

Meanwhile aid workers have been rushing to Kousseri, a dilapidated industrial town on the banks of the Chari, even as the tide of refugees that fled the city on 5 and 6 February has reversed to a trickle of people returning home. The first truck loads of supplies arrived on Wednesday, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said.

Food, plastic sheeting, mosquito nets and other supplies are being shipped to Kousseri from another site in eastern Cameroon that currently shelters refugees from Central African Republic, and from outside the region.

The International Federation of the Red Cross said it is digging 500 latrines to try to avert a sanitation crisis in the overcrowded town.

UNHCR has said it is preparing to move some of the people to a more permanent camp 32 km from Kousseri.

Refugees

Stephanie Savaraud, World Food Programme spokesperson in Kousseri said there are refugees of all socio-economic classes camped out in the city. "Some are staying in hotels, some with families, and others are more evident in the streets," she said.

The surrounding fields and streets of the Catholic Church in Kousseri are filled with refugees, lolling under trees to escape the hot midday sun. Alfred Da, who fled with his wife and children, said at night it gets very cold. "It's the bad weather that I fear now for my family," he fretted. "We're sleeping in the open air."

According to the ICRC, refugees have also been registered in Chad's other neighbours Niger, Nigeria and Central African Republic – the latter a source of over 50,000 refugees who have fled into Chad in recent years.

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