Rwandan Refugees Tell of Surprise Attacks in Zaire

The mysterious flight of more than 85,000 Rwandan refugees into the Zairian rain forest began when machete-wielding villagers stormed their camps Monday, followed the next morning by uniformed troops opening fire without warning, according to accounts given to journalists Saturday.

For a second straight day, international aid workers failed to find the main body of ethnic Hutu refugees despite a series of aerial searches. The disappearance of the refugees from Kasese camp and the nearby Biaro camp has set off an international outcry.

United Nations officials have accused the Zairian rebel movement, which is allied with Rwanda’s Tutsi-led government, of wanting to kill off the Hutus in revenge for the genocide of more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda three years ago.

In the face of such criticism, Zairian rebel leader Laurent Kabila flew to the rebel-held city of Kisangani late Saturday to investigate the possibility that his troops had a role in the disappearance.

His meeting with European Union special envoy Aldo Ajello and Pierce Gerety, the region’s U.N. humanitarian coordinator, continued into Saturday night, but there were no immediate indications of what conclusions were reached.

“I am for a clean and independent investigation into this whole saga. I seek and demand the truth only,” Kabila was quoted as saying before the meeting began.

Speaking to Reuters news agency, however, he told of the widespread hostility that many of the rebels feel toward the Hutus. Many of the Hutus were former members of the Rwandan army and militia, he charged, “armed to their teeth and using the refugee cause to hide their criminal activities.”

According to U.N. refugee agency spokesman Paul Stromberg in Kisangani, about 9,000 of the missing Hutus were severely emaciated by hunger, malaria and cholera and were too vulnerable to be moved. Now that they apparently are again wandering without food or medical attention under the thick jungle canopy, they will be condemned to a slow death, aid officials have said.

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Stromberg complained that the rebel troops are still restricting the freedom of movement of aid officials trying to find the refugees. Only a few dozen survivors, frightened and confused about where to go next, were found by journalists Saturday to the south and southwest of Kisangani, slowly making their way up the Zaire River in dugout canoes.

A 25-year-old Hutu woman who had been working in a field hospital in the Kasese camp south of Kisangani, where 55,000 people had been housed, said villagers armed with sticks, spears and machetes entered the hospital Monday and began hacking people to death. “I saw many dead bodies lying around the camp, but nobody stopped to count them,” said the woman, too frightened to give her name.

After that attack, she said, refugees began returning to the camp. The next morning they heard a train coming and thought it was bringing food. But instead rebel soldiers jumped down and starting firing at the Hutus, sending them scattering into the forest.