People who fled their homes in the Pool after military attacks are living in desperate conditions.
Gustav told Florence Morice from RFI how he lost his wife in the chaos, as people fled in all directions when the shooting started.
The headman in Yamba recalls seeing people arriving, having left their villages burning. They are afraid to return. The displaced have been in Yamba since October 2016.
“We live in difficult conditions. We are sleeping on mats, or just on the cement floor,” said a displaced man. Sometimes five or six children share a mattress. A room ten metres square houses forty people. The roof leaks and lets in the rain.
The children get ill. Sometimes they go two days without eating.
In Loutete there are 2,000 displaced, who fled when soldiers opened fire in their villages. They have received little assistance. A UNICEF sponsored children’s worker described how the young children draw pictures of military helicopters and soldiers with guns.
Caritas has registered cases of severe malnutrition in children. In Yamba, Javel Kimbassa from Caritas told RFI, “The situation is getting worse on the ground. The army has reinforced its presence one km from here, so that means the situation can only go down hill. Just three or four days ago there was an attack. We are only 6 km from the Pool.”
