Rwanda Refugees Caught In Zaire Crossfire

She said Katale camp, 45 km (28 miles) north of the North Kivu provincial capital of Goma, had held 210,000 refugees. It was the largest refugee camp in eastern Zaire before two weeks of fighting uprooted more than half a million refugees. The refugees are Rwandan Hutus and the rebels are Tutsis.

Quintaglie said she did not know where the refugees were heading, but she guessed it might be towards the southwest. Mugunga camp, the largest in the world, is in that direction.

Quintaglie and other workers also said the 107 foreign aid workers in Goma were told to gather at concentration points in the city on Friday for possible evacuation from eastern Zaire. Zairean military sources said an evacuation was likely to take place on Friday. Unruly Zairean soldiers have seized aid agency vehicles and looted at least one agency office in the past two days.

 

At the Zaire-Rwanda border crossing, the atmosphere was surreal. Six Zairean soldiers danced naked, waving automatic weapons, chanting and sprinkling water on each other.

Bukavu, about 120 km (75 miles) south of Goma, was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in eastern Zaire and the Roman Catholic archbishop Christophe Munzihirwa was killed on Tuesday.

The conflict in eastern Zaire assumed greater international dimensions with the Kinshasa government adding Uganda to the list of its enemies and more world leaders urging round table peace negotiations.

In Nairobi, a Kenyan official said a summit of at least seven African states in Kenya on November 5 would focus on the war in eastern Zaire. David Kikaya of the foreign ministry said Kenya had invited Zaire but had no official response yet.

Zaire on Thursday defiantly rejected peace talks with its neighbours despite fears that victories by advancing ethnic Tutsi rebels could herald the disintegration of the country.

The new United Nations envoy to Central Africa, Raymond Chretien, said he would focus on securing a ceasefire before tackling any other problems in the growing crisis.

Meanwhile, a report from Kinshasa says Zaires transitional parliament has voted to sever diplomatic relations with neighbours Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda and has called for a purge of ethnic Tutsis from the army, state companies and public administration.

State radio said on Friday the assembly voted for the steps, which take the form of recommendations to the government, at the end of a marathon debate in which Prime Minister Kengo wa Dondo accused the three eastern neighbours of waging war on Zaire.

A report feom Geneva says the main UN refugee agency said on Friday that it had not taken a final decision to evacuate its staff members from the eastern Zairean town of Goma, scene of gunbattles between Zairean troops and ethnic Tutsi fighters.