About 30,000 Sierra Leonean refugees have been repatriated from Guinea to their homeland in the past few weeks amid fears for 140,000 others trapped between the army and rebels, the UNHCR said yesterday.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman, Mr Kris Janowski, said: "Ten thousand returned by boat, hired by the UNHCR and the IOM (International Organisation for Migrations) and 20,000 others returned through other means."
He said the UNHCR was concentrating on relocating about 60,000 Sierra Leonean refugees living in south-eastern Guinea since September following deadly rebel attacks.
An estimated 140,000 refugees are isolated in the region while millions of others have fled to refugee camps in the north of Guinea and in the capital Conakry, he added.
Guinea is at present home to more than 418,000 refugees who have fled conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and tens of thousands of its own citizens have been displaced during fighting. The refugees include 300,000 Sierra Leoneans and about 120,000 Liberians, who themselves had been caught up in bloody conflicts which have ravaged their countries over the past decade, according to the United Nations' refugee agency.
Border regions of southern Guinea have been ravaged by rebel insurgency and conflict between government troops and dissidents fighting alongside Liberian forces and rebels from Sierra Leone since September.
Meanwhile, West African foreign ministers on Monday asked a wary UN Security Council to delay threatened sanctions against Liberian diamonds for two months as well as help finance a refugee rescue operation in Guinea.
The ministers, who travelled to New York from Mali, Nigeria, Togo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, said the United Nations should give financial support 90 days after they mounted a peacekeeping operation to save Sierra Leone and Liberian refugees trapped in cross-fire in Guinea.
The Economic Community of West African States, known as ECOWAS, pledged to send 1,700 soldiers to protect homeless people trapped in fighting between Guinean forces and rebels.
On the sanctions, Mr Lansana Kouyate, Secretary-General of ECOWAS, said the US-drafted council resolution placing an embargo on Liberia's diamond and timber exports as well as a flight and travel ban should be delayed for two months.