U.N. Reports Massacre of 50 Amid Wave of Zaire Violence

Armed men swept down on a village in eastern Zaire and massacred about 50 civilians in an ongoing wave of violence between the Zairian army and ethnic Tutsis, the United Nations said Friday.

U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali says dozens of people have been killed and wounded in eastern Zaire in recent days, since officials told about 250,000 ethnic Tutsis to leave the area in a week or face full-scale war.

U.N. spokesman Sylvana Foa described the security situation in eastern Zaire as “explosive.” The region has been a tinderbox since more than a million people, mostly Hutus, fled there two years ago to escape ethnic slaughter in Rwanda and Burundi.

In the latest violence, armed men raided the village of Bambu in eastern Zaire on Thursday and killed 50 to 60 civilians, said U.N. sources, speaking on condition of anonymity. After the attack, about 1,000 civilians fled southward toward the Katale refugee camp, about 40 miles north of the Zairian border town of Goma, the sources said.

Last Sunday, marauders swept through a Swedish missionary hospital near the eastern Zairian town of Lemera, killing at least 38 people. Twelve other people were killed in an attack on a nearby Roman Catholic missionary station. The attackers were believed to be ethnic Tutsis angry with the missions for treating Hutus.

Known as Banyamulenge, the ethnic Tutsis immigrated to eastern Zaire from Rwanda decades ago. They were granted Zairian citizenship under a government decree issued in 1972, but that decree was revoked nine years later.

Zaire began pressuring them to leave the country after the influx of Rwandan refugees escaping genocide in Rwanda.