Fire leaves 3,000 homeless in Chad refugee camp - U.N.
Source: Reuters
ZURICH, April 11 (Reuters) - Fire swept through a refugee camp in eastern Chad on Friday leaving 3,000 people homeless and 10 injured, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said. The cause of the midday blaze was believed to be an untended cooking fire which spread rapidly through tents and shelters made of sticks and mud, fanned by high winds, the Geneva-based U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement. The camp, Goz Amer, is about 70 kilometres from the Sudanese border and has a population of about 20,500 refugees. It is the southernmost of 12 UNHCR-run camps along a 600-kilometre stretch of the Chad-Sudan border housing more than 240,000 Darfur refugees, the agency said. Tensions are high between the two African states, caught up in a long-running conflict in Sudan's border region of Darfur, where around 200,000 people have been killed since 2003. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com) (Reporting by Thomas Atkins; Editing by Matthew Jones)
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