Since April 6, the surgical team has treated 128 injured patients. MSF Head of Mission Monique Nagelkerke worries there could be many more victims in the countryside, unable to reach the hospital. Some of them walked for weeks through the bush to get to the hospital. According to the patients, the civilian population of Kono is terrorised by various armed groups, who have been carrying out executions, mutilations, rapes and kidnappings. Attacks are reported to be very systematic, with groups of people rounded up and killed, wounded, or raped, one by one.
Many patients report seeing other civilians, some seriously wounded, fleeing into the bush.
They remain unaccounted for. Out of an estimated total population of half a million, about 25,000 people from Kono managed to migrate to villages in the west of the region, and another 70,000 fled across the border to Guinea. Those who remain in the province have no form of protection or care. International agencies are unable to access the area. An MSF surgical team has been working in Connaught Hospital since May 1997.