Half a Million Rwandans Cross Zaire Border in 2 Days

There was no room but still they came Friday, a barely moving mass of humanity abandoned by the government army and terrified of the rebel forces advancing across western Rwanda.

With crossing gates into Zaire thrown open, it was impossible to count how many Hutu refugees had arrived in two days. But it likely was well over 500,000, making it one of the largest flights in history.

Friday’s arrivals found most space already taken. Relief officials have already seen signs of disease in the refugee camps, where food, water and shelter are rare commodities.

“When we arrived we found nothing to eat, nowhere to stay,” one man said. “Everything is crowded. Every square meter is occupied by refugees who arrived before.”

A woman in one of the camps said her group arrived with only the clothes on their backs, along with their goats and cattle.

“It’s even worse than our worst-case scenario,” said Panos Moumtzis, a spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Goma. “It’s the largest exodus in a short period of time. The needs right now are extreme.”

The Red Cross set up two feeding centers north of Goma, and the line quickly grew miles long. Officials said the sites were chosen to keep the refugees moving out of the city to avoid trouble with local residents.

Leaders of the Hutu interim government fled Gisenyi, their stronghold across the border from Goma, as Tutsi-dominated rebels closed in on the city, pursuing what remained of the government army in full retreat.

Busloads of Rwandan soldiers scurried into Zaire. About 350 were housed at one military barracks.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the Clinton Administration severed diplomatic relations with the Hutu-dominated Rwandan government, expelled Rwandan diplomats from the United States and closed the embassy in Washington.

“The United States cannot allow representatives of a regime that supports genocidal massacre to remain on our soil,” President Clinton said in a written statement.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher said the U.S. action ended relations with the Hutu-led government, possibly clearing the way for recognition of a government formed by the Tutsi-dominated rebel front.

“We’re going to de-recognize the Rwandan diplomatic Establishment here,” Christopher told a White House news conference. “That leaves us in a situation where we have recognized no new government.”

But he said the Administration would “work with the new government, hopefully to help assist in the creation of a coalition government there.”

In Rwanda, the columns of Hutu civilians waiting to pass through the three border crossings into Zaire stretched for miles.

The Hutus fear the rebels want to avenge widespread massacres of minority Tutsis by extremist supporters of Rwanda’s Hutu-dominated government. The Hutu militias have been blamed for most of the estimated 200,000 to 500,000 deaths in the past three months in the small, central African nation.

No evidence of reprisals has surfaced. A spokeswoman for Doctors Without Borders in Goma, Samantha N. Bolton, said the arriving refugees were mostly uninjured.

Faustin Twagiramungu, a moderate Hutu picked by the rebels as prime minister of the new government, blamed the refugee crisis on hate propaganda from the crumbling Hutu government, broadcast over the radio.

“People are not fleeing from the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front), they are fleeing from the monsters that the Gisenyi government has created,” he said Friday in Kigali.

A U.N. military spokesman in Goma, Jean-Claude Perruchot, confirmed that most interim government leaders had fled to Cyangugu, a city within the safe zone set up in southwestern Rwanda by French troops for an estimated 1 million displaced people.

The Security Council held closed consultations in New York without taking any action, and no further meetings were scheduled over the weekend.

The rebels had vowed not to stop fighting until its new multiethnic government was formed under Twagiramungu and the people responsible for the massacres were apprehended.

But U.N. envoy Shaharyar Khan said the rebels indicated Friday they are ready to stop fighting.

Norman Kempster of The Times’ Washington Bureau contributed to this report.