UNHCR to probe attack on southern Sudan compound

Mar 18, 2006 (NAIROBI) — The UN refugee agency UNHCR said it was sending a security and operations team to southern Sudan to assess the situation after Wednesday’s attack on its compound in southern Sudan.

Yei town in south Sudan where the dramatic incident at UNHCR’s compound took place on Wednesday 15 March 2006. (UNHCR) .

On Wednesday night, two armed intruders attacked the agency’s compound in Yei town in southern Sudan, killing a local guard and leaving an international staff member and a local guard in critical condition.

The UNHCR said in a statement received here Saturday that the two wounded in the attack are now in stable condition in a Nairobi hospital after being evacuated by air from southern Sudan’s capital Juba on Thursday.

The UN agency said its nonessential staff in Yei traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, on Friday for debriefing on the traumatic incident, which High Commissioner Antonio Guterres said underscored the difficulty the agency faces in southern Sudan as it tries to create a sustainable environment for returning refugees after two decades of civil war.

“The UNHCR staff member evacuated — an Iraqi national — was shot three times in the abdomen during the attack and underwent surgery Thursday night after arrival in Nairobi. He had previously undergone surgery in Juba to stabilize his condition before being flown to Nairobi,” the statement said.

The UNHCR said the guard suffered a bullet wound to the leg requiring surgery during the attack by two armed intruders, one of whom was killed while the other was arrested.

Guterres is sending a team from the agency’s Emergency and Security Service to assess the situation on the ground. Assistant High Commissioner for Operations Judy-Cheng Hopkins and the director of UNHCR’s Sudan-Chad operations, Jean-Marie Fakhouri, will go to Yei, the statement said.

UNHCR, along with other UN agencies and non-governmental organizations, has been working since 2004 to prepare communities to receive returnees, building or rebuilding schools, hospitals, vocational training centers and water points.

UNHCR set up a presence in Yei in 2004 to prepare for the return of South Sudanese refugees from the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda to the West Equatorial region.

A planned repatriation movement from the DRC to the Yei region due to start next week has been suspended while UNHCR reviews the situation.

There are 350,000 refugees from South Sudan in neighboring countries, including 13,300 in DRC, and some 4 million people displaced within Sudan

(Xinhua)