“Tensions along the volatile Chad-Sudan border remain high, with people fleeing in both directions,” Jennifer Pagonis, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said today at a press conference in Geneva.

Ms. Pagonis said that a second planned transfer of some of the 13,000 new Darfur arrivals in the Birak area of eastern Chad, who fled ground and aerial attacks that began early last month, was delayed because of renewed fighting.

“More displacement is expected,” she said, noting that over 70 per cent of the new arrivals are women and children who are being relocated on a strictly voluntary basis.

According to UNHCR, the transfer exercise is particularly challenging because the newly arrived refugees are spread across 11 villages along a 40-km stretch of the remote Chad-Sudan border.

The relocated refugees are being brought to the Kounoungou camp some 70 km away from the border, where they are medically screened, receive their first one-month food ration from the World Food Programme (WFP) and are provided with a package of relief items.

UNHCR and its partners operate 12 refugee camps in eastern Chad that host 240,000 refugees from the war-torn Darfur region. An additional 50,000 refugees from the Central African Republic are in three camps in southern Chad.

In a related development, the new head of the UN mission authorized by the Security Council last year to try to protect vulnerable civilians in Chad and CAR and to facilitate the provision of humanitarian assistance, arrived in N'Djamena today to take up his post.

Victor Da Silva Angelo, who is also the Secretary-General's Special Representative, was greeted on his arrival by Youssouf Abbas Saleh, the Special Representative of the Chadian President. He later met with senior officials from the UN mission, known as MINURCAT.

The mission is a multidimensional operation including European Union military forces and comprising 300 police and 50 military liaison officers, as well as civilian staff, focusing on the areas of civil affairs, human rights and the rule of law.

Also today, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said that it was asked by the Government of Chad to oversee the reunification with their families of 103 refugee children rescued from an attempted kidnapping by activists from the French group Arc de Zoe.

UNICEF and its partners had been caring for the children since the arrest of the activists in October.