ICRC News 11 / 26/03.97
ZAIRE BACK IN KISANGANI
ICRC delegates returned to Kisangani on 20 March for the first time since rebel forces captured the city five days previously. There they carried out a survey to enable the ICRC to establish operational priorities. They found that there are some 25,000 displaced people in the Kisangani area who need help to return to their places of origin. A second priority is access to detainees, including large numbers of people arrested when the city fell.
While all international staff from the ICRC, the UN and various non-governmental organizations were withdrawn from Kisangani, the Zairian Red Cross continued working tirelessly to take wounded people to hospital and give first aid. Now back in Kisangani, the ICRC will fully support local Red Cross medical work.
To restore contact between people who fled the fighting and relatives who stayed behind, the ICRC will establish a Red Cross message service in conjunction with the Zairian Red Cross. For those who decide to embark on the 700-km journey home, aid stations will be set up along the main roads to the east. The most vulnerable - children, the elderly, pregnant women and wounded people - will be transported by lorry as far as road conditions permit.
Delegates are maintaining their presence in Lubumbashi, though they are spending the nights in Ndola, across the border in Zambia. Some staff based in Kinshasa have been redeployed to Brazzaville, the capital of Congo, to prepare an operations base in case the situation deteriorates in the Zairian capital.
Further information: Josui Anselmo, ICRC Nairobi, tel. ++2542 723 963
ALBANIA LAWLESSNESS PREVAILS
After evaluating the needs of hospitals and welfare institutions throughout the country, the ICRC is currently assessing the security situation in order to obtain safe passage for its humanitarian aid convoys. To date, the only secure access by road into Albania is via the southern border with Greece. Although Tirana airport has reopened to civilian traffic, large relief consignments cannot be taken into Albania as no safe warehousing facilities have yet been identified there.
The latest ICRC aid distributions have taken place in southern Albania, where basic emergency medical supplies were delivered last weekend in response to pleas from hospitals. In social institutions such as orphanages, old peoples' homes and centres for the mentally handicapped, staff are valiantly trying to provide food for those in their care. Many have had their stocks looted and, despite help from the local communities, have food to last for only a few days. To keep a closer watch on the situation in southern Albania, an ICRC office has been opened in the town of Gjirokaster.
As long as the security environment remains dangerously volatile, the ICRC must give very careful consideration to the risks involved. With the active help of Albanian Red Cross staff, ICRC teams have so far travelled extensively without encountering any problems, but all possible precautions continue to be taken.
Further information: Amanda Williamson, ICRC Tirana, tel. ++355 42 35 035 Michael Kleiner, ICRC Geneva, tel. ++4122 730 2281
RWANDA MOST OPERATIONS RESUME
The ICRC partially suspended its activities in Rwanda on 6 February. Ten days later it took the decision to gradually resume them. Although many places in Rwanda still remain off-limits to the organization's 60 expatriates there, most ICRC operations are to some extent now under way again.
Water and sanitation programmes are in progress in Kigali, Gikongoro, Byumba, Kibuye and Gitarama, and ICRC medical teams have resumed work at Kibuye hospital as well as at the limb-fitting centre in Gatagara. Meanwhile, prisons and communal lock-ups in accessible areas are being regularly visited, and children reunited with their families. The ICRC is paying special attention to the most vulnerable among Rwanda's population, with food being distributed to 16,000 schoolchildren in four prefectures (Gitarama, Butare, Gisenyi and Ruhengeri). Some 1,200 orphans have returned to school after the ICRC provided them with school kits and tuition fees. The Runyinya project, in which houses are being built for almost 400 women and children, survivors of the genocide, should be completed by the end of April. Lastly, a number of agricultural, bee-keeping and knitting projects have been started.
Further information: Bernard Barrett, ICRC Kigali, tel. ++250 77 3441
AFGHANISTAN A LETHAL EXPLOSION
In the early morning of 19 March the explosion of an ammunition dump caused panic in the town of Jalalabad some 120 km east of Kabul. The explosion, which occurred in the police headquarters compound, also destroyed about ten nearby buildings.
The members of the ICRC sub-delegation in Jalalabad and volunteers from the local section of the Afghan Red Crescent helped to evacuate the victims, including many civilians. One hundred and four people were admitted to the town's provincial hospital, while 175 with minor injuries received first-aid treatment there. More than 200 volunteers donated blood. On Friday a United Nations mine-clearance team was still busy clearing the scene of any remaining explosives. According to a partial death toll drawn up by the Taliban administration, fifty of the officials there at the time of the explosion were killed. Seventeen deaths were registered at the provincial hospital in Jalalabad.
The ICRC promptly launched an emergency operation to provide material assistance for around 500 people whose homes had been destroyed or damaged. Cooking utensils, fuel and plastic sheeting were distributed to them.
Further information: Jean-Luc Paladini, ICRC Kabul, tel. ++873 382 280 130 Joerg Stoecklin, ICRC Geneva, tel. ++4122 730 2906
MOROCCO/WESTERN SAHARA VISIT TO MOROCCAN PRISONERS HELD BY POLISARIO FRONT
>From 17 to 23 March a team of four delegates, including a doctor, visited 805 of some 1,900 Moroccan prisoners still in the hands of the Polisario Front. This was the sixth time since 1993 that the ICRC had visited this group of prisoners, most of whom have been in captivity for nearly 20 years.
All those who wished to do so sent a photo and a Red Cross message to their families. A system to distribute parcels sent by the prisoners' families was set up by the ICRC two years ago; between December 1996 and March 1997 it enabled 538 parcels to be delivered.
An agreement between the ICRC and the Polisario Front calls for a second visit to take place in November 1997 so as to allow the 1,100 prisoners not seen during this visit to benefit from the ICRC's protection and humanitarian services.
The ICRC is continuing to do everything possible to resolve this humanitarian issue.
Further information: Werner Kaspar, ICRC Tunis, tel. ++2161 789 134
During the week-end of 28 - 31 March 1997, for all information please call the press officer on duty, Kim Gordon-Bates, on (mobile) 41 79 357 50 03