Rwandans Crushed in Rush to Gain Safety at Zaire Border

Spurred by intensive rebel mortar and machine-gun fire, tens of thousands of Rwandan civilians and routed soldiers streamed in panic across the border to safety in Zaire on Sunday, trampling fellow Hutus to death in the pandemonium.

They were fleeing the Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels, predominantly Tutsis, who are driving toward the border after destroying the resistance of the Hutu government troops.

The victorious rebels, meanwhile, threw down the gauntlet to French troops who are in Rwanda to help protect refugees, saying they would enter a French-controlled zone in the south unless former government ministers were turned over to them. The French Foreign Ministry responded by saying France will not tolerate any armed incursions into its zone, the Reuters news agency reported from Paris.

With panic increasing and the Goma airport’s perimeter under attack, the day was Goma’s most violent since the mass exodus of Hutus began on Thursday.

Between 40 and 50 Rwandan civilians, most of them children, were trampled to death by panicky refugees trying to escape rebel fire, according to French photographer Charles Caratina, who took pictures of the bodies.

About 20 other refugees were killed by two mortar shell explosions near the main border crossing between Gisenyi and Goma, according to another French photographer.

This attack was followed by the rebels’ warning that they would attack the French humanitarian protection zone in southwestern Rwanda unless France handed over interim Hutu President Theodore Sindikukwabo and three of his ministers who sought refuge there with him.

Meanwhile, French military spokesmen said that the rebels appeared to have reached Gisenyi. Smoke and fires were visible in the onetime resort on the banks of Lake Kivu, they said.