Water, food and health care are urgently needed for migrants
fleeing the violence in Libya and arriving at the remote border
village of Zouarké, close to Niger.

An IOM team sent to Zouarké last week with desperately
needed supplies found access to water to be the most pressing issue
as thousands of migrants transit through the village, a small
cluster of about 20 huts with very limited services.

Although a group of 3,800 migrants reported to have been
stranded at the village for some weeks had managed to leave of
their own accord, IOM staff on the ground reported there were a
total of 16 trucks present during the assessment in Zouarké
with more than 1,200 migrants arriving in one go in a 24 hour
period. These included women and children.

"The village is unable to cope with providing water from a 36m
deep well for more than 500 migrants at any one time," said IOM's
assessment team leader, Craig Murphy.

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Even on a day when only 200 people were at the well, one migrant
told IOM that he had queued for five hours to fill his jerry can;
others said they had waited longer. The next day, after the arrival
of another 700 migrants in the town, scuffles broke out by the well
as emotions ran high in the wait for water.

With migrants typically staying three to four days to rest,
recover from illness or to allow repair time for the trucks that
will eventually carry them to Faya, tensions over access to water
are mounting.

The IOM team found that a number of migrants arriving in
Zouarké are sick, with no available medical services in the
village. Some of the migrants have measles and are quarantined in
the open under some trees just a few hundred metres from the rest
of the migrant population, sleeping near the trucks.

The local prefect told IOM that authorities have recorded 15
migrant deaths since the outflow from Libya began with three people
having died in Zouarké and the others either in Niger or en
route to Faya.

The IOM team delivered 15 cartons of medical supplies including
polio vaccination kits donated by the International Rescue
Committee to enable a military nurse to begin treating the
sick.

An IOM truck carrying food supplies including flour, rice, oil
and sugar also arrived at the weekend. It will be used to start up
a food assistance programme for migrants after their long, arduous
and physically challenging journey on overloaded trucks from
Gatroun and other towns in Libya.

With tens of thousands of Chadians still believed to be in
Gatroun and elsewhere in southern Libya and expected to transit
through Zouarké in the coming days and weeks, IOM will be
establishing a way station in the village, a mid-way point in the
journey from the southern Libyan city to Faya.

The way station will provide migrants fleeing Libya with food,
water, shelter and basic health care.

It will complement IOM efforts to improve conditions for
thousands of migrants travelling along this route prior to their
arrival at Faya where they will be then evacuated by the
Organization to different final destinations in Chad, including the
capital N'Djamena.

More than 25,000 Chadians have made the long truck journey from
Libya to Chad via Niger since the crisis began, forced to take this
route to avoid landmines along the Aozou Strip that separates Libya
from Chad.

For further information, please contact:

Jemini Pandya

IOM Geneva

Tel: + 41 22 717 9486

       + 41 79 217 3374

E-mail: "mailto:jpandya@iom.int">jpandya@iom.int 

or

Dr. Qasim Sufi

IOM Chad

Tel: + 235 62 900 674

E-mail: "mailto:qsufi@iom.int">qsufi@iom.int