Zairian Rebel Threatens Refugee Camp

The leader of Zaire’s Tutsi rebels, who are surrounding Rwandan Hutu militants in a camp overflowing with hundreds of thousands of refugees, said Monday that his forces will attack the camp if an international force does not intervene quickly.

Laurent Kabila said Hutu members of Rwanda’s exiled army and of militias who carried out the 1994 genocide against that country’s Tutsi ethnic minority are refusing to let refugees go from the beleaguered camp and that they shelled this rebel-controlled border town--presumably from within the Mugunga camp--over the weekend, killing two people.

“How long should we go letting the shelling and killing go on?” he asked. “We must stop the killing of innocent people. We hope the international community can do something before it is too late.”

Kabila’s threat seemed designed to increase pressure on the United States and its European allies to take action to protect delivery of relief supplies.