Zairian Rebels Agree to Let U.N. Repatriate Rwandan Refugees

The U.N. refugee agency says it has secured permission from Zairian rebels to send home about 100,000 Rwandan refugees, many of them in urgent need of food and medical care, who are camped in eastern Zaire.

The refugees, mostly Hutus who fled Rwanda fearing retribution for the 1994 massacres of minority Tutsis, left camps in territory overrun by the Zairian rebels.

The refugees have been camping along a 60-mile railway that runs from Kisangani, Zaire’s third-largest city, to the south, and have been heading north toward Kisangani in search of food.

Paul Stromberg, a spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said Thursday that the rebels have given aid workers time to distribute food and medicine to refugees and to begin repatriation.

Scores of refugees have died during their long march from one camp to another in eastern Zaire, and others are in urgent need of assistance, Stromberg said.

He said a U.N. medical team counted at least 52 dead and more than 200 sick refugees along one section of the railway.

Thousands of refugees have stopped in Lula, four miles south of Kisangani, because the rebels refuse to allow them into Kisangani, which they captured earlier this month.