TWO Irish aid workers were evacuated from eastern Zaire last night as the fighting escalated between the Zairean military and Tutsi rebels in the area.
Ms Nora Doheny from Kilkenny and Ms Siobhain Lagan from Belfast were among five Concern workers evacuated from the town of Goma in east Zaire to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Ms Lagan said that the UN had mounted an emergency evacuation after a series of rebel attacks last week, culminating in attacks on the town of Uvira and on the refugee camp at Kubumba camp. Up to 200.000 refugees have fled the camp in the direction of Goma as a result and the expatriate community in Goma had now been reduced from 270 to around 52 by evacuation.
"There is a general air of panic among the local population," said Ms Lagan. "People are really unsure what constitutes the rebel force as such." She said that local people feared that Goma would now fall to the rebels along with Uvira and Bukavu, although the Zairean military was flying in arms and reinforcements as they left for Nairobi yesterday.
"What we are doing now is sorting ourselves out to go back into Rwanda," she said. "We are ready to receive a lot of internally displaced people and refugees there, but Goma is out of the question." Last night Concern's African regional director, Father Jack Finucane, said both women would be redeployed in aid centres on the Rwandan side of the Zaire Rwanda border within the next few days.
In a separate incident, staff at a Concern compound in Bukavu, south of Goma, were beaten by Zairean military yesterday and two vehicles were stolen as Tutsi rebels attacked the town.
Mr Dominic McSorley, Concern's director for Rwanda based in Kigali, the capital, said an "extremely frightened" Zairean Concern worker in Bukavu had contacted him to say that Zairean military had beaten a Concern driver and stolen a truck and an all terrain vehicle early yesterday morning. He said there had also been reports of "apt and small scale genocide" in the region as well as shelling from the Rwandan side of the border.
Both Concern and Trocaire have warned of a "major catastrophe" in the Great Lakes area of East Africa unless the international community acts decisively.
The Concern compound in Bukavu has now been evacuated and there are no UN or NGO staff left in the area. Around 52 essential UNHCR staff remain in the Goma area.
Some 180,000 refugees have started moving south towards Goma after the Kibumba camp, outside Goma, had been shelled, apparently from the Rwandan side of the border.
Father Fipycane said Concern was in a position to supply immediate aid to refugees in two camps in Rwanda and was preparing to open two more camps on behalf of the UNHCR. He warned that if supplies ran out for refugees in Zaire, they could face a cholera epidemic.
According to Mr Peter St Clair, who works with Trocaire in the Rwandan capital, Kigali his organisation has been asked to provide water and sanitation facilities in a camp in the Gifenwi Prefecture of Rwanda, some 20 km from Goma, to deal with the anticipated influx of refugees 3,000 to 4,000 of whom crossed into Rwanda yesterday.
Agencies add:
France is holding talks with EU partners and UN agencies on the possible evacuation of the small number of French nationals in eastern Zaire, officials said in Paris yesterday.
On Saturday, Paris repeated its "full support" for efforts by the UN secretary general and international organisations and called on the EU to send additional aid for the Zairean population as soon as possible.
EU foreign ministers will further discuss the crisis during talks in Luxembourg today.
Belgium also issued a call yesterday for its nationals living in eastern Zaire to leave the country. A foreign ministry spokesman said the Belgian embassy in Kinshasa had individually contacted the 230 Belgians remaining in the two troubled provinces of north and south Kivu.
A BBC journalist, Martin Dawes, and a Belgian cameraman, Marc Hoogsteyns, were beaten, threatened and robbed at gun point by soldiers in Zaire.