Livewire - Amnesty International blogging for human rights

Andrew Philip, Amnesty International researcher, blogging from the field

Today we spent the day at Nakivale camp, 300km away inside Uganda from the Congolese border, speaking to more refugees, including a 14-year-old boy who was on his own in the camp. Crying his eyes out, he told us how he has found his father, mother and sister shot dead inside a hospital in Eastern DRC. A man described to us the killing at point-blank range of his neighbour and friend. There are a lot of very traumatised people at the camp and at Ishasha.

Since we were last at Nakivale two days ago 3,000 Congolese refugees have arrived and the humanitarian operations in the camp are stretched to the limit. The Ugandan government has confirmed that at least 10,000 people have crossed the border in the last two days at the Ishahsa border point. But many more thousands of refugees are believed to have crossed the border through the bush. All of them are now without assistance although the Ugandan government and humanitarian agencies are trying to locate them.

Many have been moving from place to place, fleeing the fighting for the last two months and are in extremely poor medical condition, and the medical situation is causing concerns to the Ugandan government and the humanitarian agencies.

There is a growing atmosphere of fear in the refugee camp because the refugees believe that many infiltrators also crossed the border and are now also inside the camp. They are therefore careful about telling us what they know and are always looking over their shoulders.