Hundreds Die as Cholera Sweeps Rwanda Refugees : Africa: In grim scenes at Zairian border, relief workers rush to bury victims of epidemic in mass graves. Overwhelmed officials have lost count of the bodies.

The acrid stench of death filled the air here Thursday, as hundreds upon hundreds of corpses--a few here, a dozen a few yards farther, 25 more just beyond--lined dusty roads and littered the cruel fields of what has become the world’s closest glimpse of hell.

Relief operations for the more than 1 million Rwandan refugees who have flooded this remote Zairian border town focused on the grim task of picking up and burying at least 1,100 men, women and children who fell victim in the last 24 hours to what doctors confirmed as a suddenly raging cholera epidemic.

“We stopped counting at 800 bodies” along the road Thursday morning, said Koenraad Henckaerts of the relief group Doctors Without Borders. But that was early, and worse was to come as the fiercely contagious disease spread amid the squalor and filth.

“We’ve lost the body count,” French Army 1st Lt. A. Ramasco said wearily at midafternoon as he supervised six military trucks that rumbled slowly down the road outside the airport on burial detail. “We’re a transport regiment, not morticians.”

He wiped his brow and stared at the nearest row of roadside corpses. Most were wrapped in thin reed mats or tattered rags. Babies and children were tiny bundles in the dirt. A few legs and arms poked out, coated like all else here in the thick gray dust and smoke that chokes the air and stings the eye.

Even as the soldiers drove off with the dead, more victims collapsed behind them. One man simply fell over as he rode his bicycle; two others dragged him to the side where he lay, limp and shaking, amid the passing crowd. Another dropped as he walked, his head resting on a wrapped body.

Nearby, two boys, no older than 10, tugged at a filthy gray blanket to cover the thin corpse of another boy. Not far away, a girl, younger yet, gasped in silent sobs by her father’s limp body. An infant sat, wailing weakly by her mother’s lifeless form in a pile of volcanic rocks.

Up the road, a French front-end loader dug a long trench near a grove of banana trees. Workers tossed body after body into the pit; each tumbled down to join the ghastly jumble of torsos, limbs and rags. At least 500 corpses were in the mass grave, officials said. Behind them, a bulldozer pushed dirt over the searing scene.

Perhaps the inner circle of this Dantesque tableau was three miles north at Munigi. Physicians from Doctors Without Borders and other aid groups worked a makeshift triage ward on an open field strewn with jagged lava rocks and the bodies of the dead and dying.

“Yesterday morning we had 10 dead,” said Dr. Isabelle Pardieu. “Last night, we had 100. Now it is just growing and growing.”

A handful of the still-living had intravenous drips hooked up. But most simply waited for the agony to end. Groans of pain and children’s cries filled the still air. A corner of the field was reserved for the dead; fresh corpses arrived in a steady stream at midday.

“Is he dead yet?” shouted Kevin Noone, from the Irish aid group GOAL, pointing at the limp body of a man face-down on the road.

“Not yet! Not yet!” shouted a colleague. “Soon.”

Without pausing, they returned to their grisly work: spraying a dozen bodies with disinfectant and loading them, sad and sagging, into a brown pickup truck. More bodies arrived as fast as these were carted off, 60 in an hour, 300 by nightfall. “It’s literally like a conveyor belt,” Noone said as he worked. “They bring them in, and we load them on the truck.”

Noone said he had rented a 40-foot trailer truck to carry bodies today, an indication of the horrors expected ahead.

Doctors predicted that the cholera--which causes severe diarrhea, vomiting and sometimes death within five hours--is likely to infect 10,000 to 50,000 refugees. Untreated, half will probably die. “You cannot stop it at the moment,” warned Henckaerts.

Cholera initially spreads in contaminated water, but then can be passed directly from person to person. Corpses are especially contagious, so quick burial is critical. The chief treatment for those infected is immediate rehydration with special solutions to replace lost fluids. And the only reliable prevention is provision of chlorinated water. But both the solutions and clean water are in impossibly short supply.

The first air shipment of 10,000 liters of solution arrived Thursday but most had been used by nightfall. Another shipment was expected today, but the airport is already running at near capacity.

“We’ve only got one runway and you can’t just pound it and pound it or you’ll have to close it,” said Paul Gilham, in charge of the airlift here. Moreover, only six planes can be parked and unloaded at one time, or fewer if large cargo planes come in.

Still, relief supplies are increasing. About 80 tons of food were distributed Thursday and 200 tons are planned for today. Up to 400 tons may arrive by next week. About 600 tons of food are needed each day, however.

The first truck convoy is expected late today or Saturday, officials said. They hope the road link from Kampala, 420 miles away in neighboring Uganda, may open a lifeline for faster provision of supplies.

The epidemic, the latest legacy of Rwanda’s 3 1/2-month civil war and slaughter, created obvious new demands on already-overwhelmed relief groups. They have barely begun to provide food, water and shelter for the estimated 1.2 million Hutu refugees who fled here in the last week for fear of retribution from victorious Tutsi-led rebels in Rwanda.

In Washington, President Clinton said the United States was ready “to lead the United Nations in responding to the cholera problem and in dealing with the other aspects of this human catastrophe.”

He ordered Anthony Lake, White House national security adviser, J. Brian Atwood, administrator of the Agency for International Development, and Pentagon officials to develop a plan for U.S. emergency relief.

Atwood said the first priority was to send water, medicine and medical equipment to help check the cholera epidemic. The Pentagon plans to use as many as 1,000 U.S. service personnel to deliver relief supplies.

“The international community has never seen anything like this,” Atwood said, announcing an additional $41.4 million in U.S. aid.

Atwood said the only long-term solution to the crisis was to persuade Rwandans still in their country to stay there and to get refugees to return home. To that end, he said, the United States plans to send much of its food aid to the southwest part of Rwanda as an incentive to refugees to remain there.

In Goma, CARE country director Ralph Hazleton, who flew in Thursday from Nairobi, Kenya, on an Antonov cargo plane filled with a Toyota truck, mattresses and supplies, said his immediate plans were to help move 400,000 refugees to a more rural site selected by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Just where wasn’t clear.

“I got one report that it’s four kilometers north of Goma, and another that it’s 70,” Hazleton said. “We’ll find out when we get there.”

Refugee camps are a misnomer. Hundreds of thousands of people simply squat by the roadside, awaiting their fate. Survivors lead bleating goats and long-horned cattle; a few sell yams and corn by the road. Rwandan soldiers, routed by rebels, strut by in their camouflage uniforms.

Long lines of people shuffle endlessly down the road. Many carry yellow plastic jugs on their head, filled with water from Lake Kivu, about four miles south.

Others head north to promised food distribution sites.

Those who can, cover their noses with handkerchiefs, towels or surgical masks to cut the odor of death, dust and diesel.

The sun, dimmed by the smoky haze, is a dull orb overhead. The refugees have stripped many of the trees for firewood.

Their countless cooking fires were the only sign of life when night fell like a shroud on the tragedy of Goma.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.

Cholera’s Spread

Poor sanitation, lack of clean drinking water and crowded living conditions have prompted a cholera epidemic in Rwandan refugee camps.

Human feces contain the cholera germs. Bacteria is spread by flies and unsanitary handling of food.

Cholera spreads when germs are ingested from contaminated food and water. Bacteria causes diarrhea, vomiting and cramps, leading to dehydration. If untreated, half the victim die.

Gross dehydration can be treated with intravenous fluid and antibiotics. When treated promptly, and if no kidney damage has occurred, patients can fully recover.