THE eastern town of Kalima and its Rwandan Hutu refugee camp have fallen to rebels, informed sources said here yesterday. Reports also said that dozens had been killed in new air raids against rebel positions to the north and that the camp's 25,000 refugees had fled in panic before the fall.
As reports circulated of the town's fall - apparently without fighting - sources here said that dozens of people had been killed in the past few days in air raids by Zairean government forces on rebel positions on the road between Kisangani and Bafwasende, further to the north.
Government forces said the bombardments, which created panic, would continue until the area was "cleansed".
The government had publicly ended mediated peace talks with the rebels in Cape Town on Friday, the second day of the separate negotiations with US and South African go betweens, prompting an outburst by the rebel leader, Mr Laurent Desire Kabila, yesterday.
If the Zairean President, Mr Mobutu Sese Seko, "doesn't want to continue negotiations, we will be forced to resume the hostilities which will raze all the country", Mr Kabila said on rebel radio, adding that he himself was "ready to go to Cape Town to meet political leaders of the same level".
Mr Kabila said his fighters were advancing on the government held town of Gbadolite, and were "a few kilometres" from the airport of Kisangani, headquarters to the Zairean army.
The Kalima camp was only opened last Monday, initially to house 25,000 Rwandan Hutu refugees who evacuated their camp at Shabunda, 70 km to the east.
As the UNHCR asked Zaire's government to allow it to carry out an aerial search for the refugees, aid workers said the flight had taken place within around an hour. "It was incredible. There was nothing left there, as if the camp had never existed," a non governmental organisation member said.