Chad refugees wary of going home despite calm

By Alistair Thomson

KOUSSERI, Cameroon (Reuters) - Like thousands of people who fled a weekend rebel assault on the Chadian capital, Fatima Abdelrahim is hungry and thirsty but too scared to go home.

Abdelrahim still bears the long, roughly-stitched scar where shrapnel tore through her arm when a mortar fell on her house the last time the rebels attacked N'Djamena in April 2006.

This time she was luckier: her only injury a sprained ankle as she emerged from a wooden boat when she crossed the river. But with the remnants of the rebel force still inside Chad, some 600 km (375 miles) from the capital, she will not go back.

"I can't go to N'Djamena," Abdelrahim told Reuters in the Cameroonian border town of Kousseri.

Aid agencies reckon up to 60,000 Chadians crossed the river border after the weekend attack on N'Djamena. A few hundred crossed back into the capital at the urging of Chadian police on Wednesday, but most of them do not dare.

Many thousands are living in school rooms, makeshift shelters or sleeping rough in Kousseri, where supplies are running short and refugees say they can ill-afford rocketing prices for food and drinking water.

Many refugees are waiting for word from loved ones left behind in N'Djamena, where burnt-out pickups litter the streets and authorities are still collecting dead bodies.

"We're waiting for peace. We have no information here, nothing," said Amina Agoni, sitting with her family in the dusty square in front of Kousseri's town hall.