55,000 Rwandans at Zairian Camp Missing, U.N. Reports

A United Nations team Thursday discovered that up to 55,000 Rwandan Hutu refugees are missing from a camp in eastern Zaire, and the team was blocked by rebels from a wider search.

Not a single Rwandan refugee--dead or alive--could be found at Kasese camp, south of the city of Kisangani. Last week bodies draped in blankets had been laid out in lines at the camp, and many sick refugees there were too weak to walk even one step.

“I’m absolutely shocked. There was a camp here four days ago. People were sick, hungry and too weak to walk. Where are they?” asked Filippo Grandi, an official with the U.N. refugee agency.

“We’re very concerned about their lives. And we need answers from rebels about their fate,” Grandi said.

“My impression was that the place was extremely sanitary for a camp where people had fled at a moment’s notice,” said Brenda Barton, a spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Program.

“This the first time a large group of refugees has disappeared on [rebel] alliance territory, and the alliance is responsible to explain what happened to these people,” said Peter Kessler, a spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Nairobi, Kenya.

The refugees arrived at Kasese and Biaro camps in mid-March after six months of trekking over volcanic rock and through thick bush and jungle in an attempt to flee the Tutsi-dominated rebels.

Zairian villagers said Wednesday that Tutsi-dominated rebels had killed hundreds of Rwandan Hutu refugees at Kasese and that a battle between rebels and refugees accompanied the slaughter.

Rwanda said Thursday that it was very concerned about the plight of nearly 100,000 Rwandan Hutu refugees in makeshift camps in Zaire and urged that aid workers be allowed to reach them.

Rebel leader Laurent Kabila dismissed the reports as “total nonsense,” saying Rwandan Hutu militiamen among the refugees attacked villagers, and rebels intervened to stop the fighting.

The rebels sealed off the Kasese and Biaro camps from aid workers and journalists Monday, saying they were conducting a military operation. They agreed to allow the U.N. mission into the camps only after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was “shocked and appalled by the inhumanity” of their action.