Tens of thousands of people flee Cameroon as violence spreads

Over the past few weeks thousands of people from Cameroon have crossed the Logone and Chari rivers to find refuge in Chad due to ongoing violence. There are now around 100,000 people, the vast majority of whom are women and children, living in around 20 informal sites. We are mobilising teams in response, to provide care for people in need.

“The first inter-communal conflicts between Mousgoum fishermen and Arab herders in Cameroon began in August this year,” says Jessie Gaffric, MSF head of mission in Chad. “For a few weeks, we organised mobile clinics to provide basic healthcare to 11,000 refugees in Chad, before the situation calmed down.”

However the violence resumed suddenly and brutally, as it did on 8 December in Kousseri, a Cameroonian town on the border with Chad’s capital N’Djamena due to tensions over agricultural, pastoral and fisheries resources, which have not been resolved.

Forty-three people were injured by knives, bullets or arrows. Twenty-five of them had to be hospitalised in N’Djamena because of the lack of appropriate care in Kousseri.