Rebels’ Hold on Region Disputed in Zaire

Zairian rebels appointed a new governor for the Kivu region of Zaire to signal their hold on the region, but local residents and Rwandan refugees coming out of the forest Saturday reported fresh fighting in the area.

In Geneva, Western aid chiefs, donors and Rwandan government officials met to coordinate relief efforts for more than half a million Rwandan Hutu refugees who have poured back home from eastern Zaire over the past week after two years in exile.

A meeting of military commanders to discuss an armed intervention force to help bring aid to Rwandan and Burundian refugees in Zaire was also taking place in Stuttgart, Germany.

In Zaire, rebel leader Laurent Kabila on Friday appointed a new governor for the Kivu area, seized by rebels last month. Kabila told a news conference in Bukavu that the governor would rule the whole region alongside Lake Kivu.

The new governor, Cubaka Anatole Bishikwabo, is a member of the local Bashi tribe, and his deputy is one of the Banyamulenge, the ethnic Tutsi tribe that launched the rebellion, sources in Nairobi, Kenya, said.

A Reuters correspondent said more than 2,100 refugees had made their way to Mugunga camp, near Goma, where they were being processed by aid workers.

“We hid in the forest for three weeks and have had a seven-day walk from the forest, during which we were being attacked” by members of a Zairian militia, said Nathan Mdutiye, who said he would return to Rwanda.

Another group of refugees--two women and six children, one with Down syndrome--said they had lost their brothers and husbands in an attack by men armed with bows and arrows and sticks.

Other refugees said there were “many, many” refugees still in the forest, but they could give no clear idea of the number.

In Goma, doctors reported a cholera epidemic, with 15 deaths in the past week.