UN copter attacked in Cote d'Ivoire's

 
China.org.cn, March 30, 2011

The mission "reiterates its military impartiality and once again urges all the parties to quickly find a definitive solution to the post-electoral crisis in order to end the suffering of the Ivorian people," it added.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), meanwhile, said a total of 116,000 Ivorian refugees have fled to eight countries in West Africa, with all but 4,000 of them having entered Liberia.

"With each new clash in western Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia is in turn seeing new arrivals of refugees," spokesperson Melissa Fleming told reporters in Geneva. She said Liberia's western county of Grand Gedeh has over the past week received the largest influx of Ivorian refugees.

People fleeing Côte d'Ivoire have also sought refuge in Ghana, Togo, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin and Nigeria, according to UNHCR.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the appeal for funds to assist refugees in Liberia has been revised with requirements almost tripled to $146.5 million for an estimated 150,000 refugees. Some $35 million has been received so far, according to spokesperson Elisabeth Byrs.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) announced that it would focus on three tasks in Côte d'Ivoire – getting 800,000 children back to school; ensuring basic health care for mothers and children; and providing an estimated 1.5 million people in the north and west with reliable access to electricity and water.

UNICEF spokesperson Marixie Mercado told reporters in Geneva that the achievement of those goals would depend of the level of funding, saying that only about 20 per cent of UNICEF's $33 million funding appeal had so far been met.

According to Fadéla Chaib, spokesperson for the UN World Health Organization (WHO), a vaccination campaign against yellow fever was launched on 25 March and would continue until 1 April, targeting some 2 million people in south-eastern Côte d'Ivoire.

Some 700,000 children between the ages of nine months and five years would also be given vitamin A and de-worming medication.

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