Eight people have died in over a week of intercommunal clashes in the Kakuma refugee camp in northwest Kenya, the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR announced.
Four people were killed last night in fighting that began 26 October between Dinka and Nuer refugees from South Sudan.
“Notwithstanding police reinforcements, the situation deteriorated again yesterday morning, when four more refugees were killed (bringing the total deaths over the past week to 8),” said UNHCR in a press statement Tuesday.
The first fighting began after the alleged rape of a South Sudanese girl by a member of a different ethnicity. One South Sudanese person died in those clashes.
A few days later, Burundian refugees were targeted. A refugee source in the camp told Radio Tamazuj that Burundian boda boda (motorcycle taxi) drivers were accused of being hired by members of one South Sudanese community during the fighting. UNHCR said that a Burundian boda boda driver ran over a child.
UNHCR said South Sudanese, Burundians, and Congolese refugees have been killed. The fighting has concentrated in Camp 4, and many families have moved to police posts for safety.
An aid worker in the camp said that four Nuer, one Dinka, and three Burundians have been killed, Voice of America reported.
South Sudanese Dinka refugee Peter Dhieu Mayom told VOA: “The crisis which has erupted in South Sudan is the one now that has brought to the camp. But the time we were here before there was no problem, but with the influx of the refugees, the new arrivals, now the war starts.”
UNHCR said that “Kakuma is overcrowded and additional land is urgently needed” to accomodate the influx of South Sudanese refugees since the start of the ongoing civil war. 180,000 refugees from 20 countries live in Kakuma, with 86,800 from South Sudan.
The UN agency said that it is working with Kenyan authorites and refugees “to restore calm, and appealing for calm and peaceful coexistence among all communities in the camp.”
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1 dead, 8 injured in ethnic clashes in Kenya’s Kakuma camp
File photo: Kakuma III refugee camp in northern Kenya, 2010 (Matija Kovac/Worldpress)