Zaire Fighting Intensifies, Un Readies Pullout

Incoming and outgoing mortar bombs and heavy weapons fire centred on an area about two km (one mile) north of the city limits and mortar bombs exploding in the outskirts of Goma could be seen from the Rwandan border.

It feels like a war. As of this morning we feel the fighting is very close and the circle is getting tighter, said Panos Moumtzis of the UN refugee agency UNHCR in Goma.

Aid agencies have been told to prepare for a 70 to 100 percent evacuation from Goma, said Steve Pratt of CARE International by telephone from Goma, just across the border from Gisenyi, Rwanda.

 

This would take place by road to the south to Rwanda. We have been told to stay put in our houses until the decision is taken, said Pratt.

But other aid workers said even an evacuation by road would be hard as more than 50 aid agency vehicles had been seized, most of them by Zairean soldiers, in the last 48 hours in Goma. A swathe of eastern Zaire close to Rwanda and Burundi is now outside government control after a lightning campaign by Tutsi guerrillas and the future of Zaire as a unified state is in now in doubt.