Panic Ensues as Rwanda, Zaire Exchange Fire

Some of Central Africa’s worst fighting since Rwanda’s genocidal war two years ago erupted Friday as the Tutsi-led government army here exchanged fierce artillery fire with neighboring Zaire, sending thousands of panicked residents fleeing from both sides of the bitter combat.

There were conflicting reports that heavily armed uniformed Rwandan troops had crossed the border and were battling to push Zairian army soldiers from the strategic city of Goma, the chief lifeline for hundreds of thousands of ethnic Hutu refugees in internationally supported camps in eastern Zaire.

Three Rwandan military assault boats with .50-caliber mounted machine guns zipped across Lake Kivu’s sparkling waters and fired into Goma from the Zairian side of the vast lake.

The roar of automatic weapons, exploding grenades and recoilless rifles echoed throughout the day; the deadly fire flickered in the night sky, even as Rwandan army convoys rushed reinforcements and arms to the embattled border.

Friday’s death toll was not immediately clear, but the ferocity of the exchange escalated a conflict that seemingly began last month as a local rebellion by ethnic Zairian Tutsis, called the Banyamulenge.

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U.N. officials say privately that the Banyamulenge insurgency now appears to have cloaked a covert military operation by the Tutsi-led regimes in Rwanda and Burundi. Both governments have repeatedly demanded that refugee camps on their western borders be closed or moved deeper into Zaire to stop the deadly assaults of militant Hutu extremists based in the camps.

The fighting so far has achieved that goal, with at least 15 refugee camps now abandoned and, in some cases, destroyed.

More than 600,000 refugees have picked up their meager belongings and moved en masse to other sites inside Zaire since the first rebel attack on the Runingo camp near Uvira on Oct. 13.

More than 400,000 refugees are now at Mugunga, the world’s largest refugee camp, with 115,000 others en route from another site since Thursday. About 200,000 more refugees were reported to have abandoned the Kitale camp Friday and were also apparently moving toward Mugunga.

Officials said more than 100 international aid workers were pinned down in Goma on Friday at the International Committee of the Red Cross compound, where they have gathered to await evacuation by road to Rwanda.

At least 100 other expatriates, mostly Belgian residents and missionaries, were also trapped in the fighting.

A diplomat here said a United Nations rescue effort had stalled, because Zaire’s government in Kinshasa has refused for the past two days to permit the foreigners to leave.

“Some people are using the word hostages,” he said.

But Panos Moumtzis, a U.N. refugee agency spokesman in Goma, said by telephone before the battle erupted that many of the aid workers preferred to stay.

“We don’t want to leave, and we don’t want to leave the refugees,” he said. “We fear that, if the relief agencies leave, it would be an absolute disaster for the refugees and for local Zairians.”

The evacuation of the remaining international aid agencies would leave the 715,000 ethnic Hutu refugees in camps around Goma and about 400,000 other Hutu refugees farther south cut off from outside supplies of food, medicine and other emergency goods.

But that outcome increasingly seemed likely Friday as Zairian presidential guard troops, who were hired and have been paid by the U.N. to protect relief operations since late 1994, joined other Zairian soldiers in a frenzy of looting and destruction in Goma, aid officials said.

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The day began here with the strange spectacle of six naked men dancing on the Zairian side of the border. They waved machetes and AK-47 assault rifles, cast spells and taunted the Rwandan soldiers.

Then, shortly before noon, Zaire lobbed at least three mortar shells into this Rwandan lake resort.

Rwanda fired back, and a deafening duel ensued.

The day’s fighting caused thousands of terrified residents on both sides of the border to pack their bags and flee in pandemonium.

Heavily loaded cars, trucks and minivan taxis jammed the road east from Gisenyi as people streamed from the city.

Unlike refugees in the camps, many of those along the road appeared middle-class. Some of the men wore dark suits, while the women were attired in frilly dresses and leather pumps. Many carried huge suitcases. One man could be seen lugging a large television. A man in a wheelchair was nearly buried beneath a huge mound of suitcases and bags.

“I couldn’t even pack my bags because I was so afraid,” said Beatrice Mujawayzu, 19, a college student who fled with only a small plastic sack. “I was afraid I would be killed.”

Clotilde Ntirenganya, 12, managed to put on her best dress over another dress, roll up her foam mattress and grab two chickens when the first shells landed a few hundred feet from her home. But she lost her mother, brother and two other relatives in the tumult outside.

“For me, my family is lost,” she said with a quivering lip, still holding the chickens at a military roadblock where she had stood for hours. “I don’t know where they are.”