ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 3, 1996 TAG: 9611040080
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: GISENYI, RWANDA
SOURCE: Associated Press
Tutsi rebels apparently seized control of the Zairian border town of Goma on Saturday, following two days of fighting that scattered more than 1 million terrified refugees throughout eastern Zaire with little food and no medical assistance.
Rwandan army spokesman Maj. Emmanuel Ndahiro said he had ``very good information'' that Goma airport was in rebel hands. Fighting in Goma died down Saturday afternoon, apparently as Zairian troops retreated from the capital of North Kivu province.
Sporadic shooting continued, and snipers near the lakeside border crossing prevented journalists who fled to Rwanda earlier Saturday with more than 100 foreign aid workers from re-entering Goma.
Without the aid workers, the refugees must fend for themselves.
``They are helpless. They are in the hands of God. There is no one else to help them,'' said Panos Moumtzis of the U.N. refugee agency.
Moumtzis was among those who fled to Gisenyi from Goma, where the group spent two days lying on the floor of a U.N. building with bullets crashing through the windows.
A humanitarian catastrophe is developing in eastern Zaire that would surpass that of the summer of 1994, when thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees died daily from cholera and other diseases, Moumtzis warned.
U.N. officials estimated at least 700,000 of the 1.1 million Rwandan Hutu refugees who lived in camps in eastern Zaire are scattered through the hills and forests along Zaire's frontiers with Rwanda and Burundi.
Their numbers are swelling as Zairians from Goma and other towns in the path of advancing Tutsi rebels join the refugee tide. Some 23,000 Zairians have fled north into Uganda this week, U.N. officials said.
Moumtzis said young refugee children will be particularly vulnerable to malnutrition and diarrhea that, without treatment, could kill within hours.
Aid workers, he said, pulled out of Goma with ``a guilty conscience.'' But pinned down by cross-fire, the choices were few.
``When your relief people can't go help refugees, why put their life at risk?'' asked Christiana Berthiaume, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva.
Refugees have only enough food to last a week on half rations, said Brenda Barton of the World Food Program, speaking in Kenya.
About 700 Rwandan Hutus and Zairians sought refuge in Gisenyi on Saturday, filing through a border crossing north of town. Some changed their minds at the last moment and attempted to return to Goma, but a burst of gunfire on the Zairian side sent them scurrying through.
Zaire's Tutsi insurgency began last month after local authorities ordered them off land they have lived on for generations. Tutsi villages were attacked by Zairian troops, armed Hutu refugees and tribal vigilantes.
Years of fighting have plagued the central African region. In 1994, Hutu extremists in Rwanda slaughtered some 500,000 Tutsis, then fled to Zaire when a Tutsi-led rebel army took control of the country. However, Tutsi rebels claim the current uprising is politically, not ethnically, motivated.
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. A Tutsi refugee girl cries as she waits to beby CNBtransferred to another camp from the town of Gisenyi.