No fewer than 30,000 people in northern Cameroon have fled to Chad after ethnic clashes which have so far claimed at least 22 lives erupted at the weekend.
This was confirmed on Friday by the UN’s refugee agency in a statement on Saturday.
Africa Daily News, New York gatherd that violence broke out in the border village of Ouloumsa on Sunday in a heated disagreement between herders, fishermen, and farmers over dwindling water resources, the UNHCR said in a statement issued from Geneva.
It then spread to neighbouring villages, 10 of which have been burned to the ground.
The clashes have displaced thousands inside the country, ‘forcing more than 30,000 people to flee to neighbouring Chad,’ the UNHCR said.
‘At least 22 people have been killed and 30 others seriously injured during several days of ongoing fighting.’
The violence is unfolding in Logone-Chari in Cameroon’s Far North region — the tongue of land that lies between Nigeria to the west and Chad to the east.
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The UN figures for those seeking refuge, and the death toll, are far higher than numbers given earlier by other sources.
The Chadian Red Cross said on Thursday there were at least 3,000 refugees, although the number was likely to grow, while the Cameroonian authorities said at least four had died.
According to the UNHCR, at least eighty percent of the new arrivals are women, including many who are pregnant, and children,
They have found refuge in the Chadian capital N’Djamena and villages along Chad’s bank of the Logone River.
The UNHCR said at least 10,000 have fled to N’Djamena from Kousseri, a town of 200,000 people whose cattle market was destroyed in the fighting.
Cameroonian officials say two of the parties in the conflict are fishermen of the Musgum community and ethnic Arab Choa cattlemen.
A bout of violence between herders and fishermen in August led to 45 deaths and an influx of at least 10,000 people into Chad.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
