THE United Nations appealed urgently yesterday for western satellite pictures to trace hundreds of thousands of refugees, who could face death as they flee ethnic conflict in eastern Zaire.
Mr Augustine Mahiga, regional co-ordinator for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said his agency had no access to up to north of the Goma region and 300,000 on the run in Uvira and Bukavu further south.
He told a news conference that the UNHCR and aid agencies, which have pulled out of Bukavu and Uvira because of a lack of security, had no way of knowing what the refugees were doing.
The refugees are fleeing clashes between ethnic Banyamulenge Tutsi fighters and Zaire's unpaid troops
Rwandan and Zairean forces traded mortar and machine-gun fire across their border for two hours yesterday, aid officials and other witnesses said. Aid workers at the Cyangugu office of the UNHCR, which is close to the border, had to briefly take refuge in their residence from the firing.
In Brussels, the EU's Aid Coin- - missioner, Ms Emma Bonino, said one million people could die in Zaire and called for swift action to avert disaster.
Zaire's sick and absent President Mr Mobutu Sese Seko, placed the east of his country under military rule yesterday. But it was not clear whether Mr Mobutu, In Switzerland for medical treatment, had the clout to win back lost territory quickly.
As pictures of columns of refugees moving in tea plantations till western television screens, there have been few credible witness accounts of the fighting.
Banyamulenge fighters are reported to have seized large parts of eastern Zaire in a lightning advance. Zaire has accused Rwanda of invading. Rwanda's Tutsi-dominated government which took power after the genocide of 1994 has denied the charge.
Mr Mahiga said 300,000 Rwandan and Burundian Hutu refugees were moving south of Uvira and 100,000 moving north towards Bukavu.
There was no mass movement towards Rwanda, where many refugees fear merciless and random revenge for the genocide.
"Our primary concern now is to avert a humanitarian catastrophe," Mr Mahiga said. "For refugees we can't access, there is very little we can do."
As the crisis unfolds, Mr Mahiga said UNHCR had had no direct contact with Mr Mobutu, who has been undergoing prostate cancer treatment and is living in a luxury hotel in Lausanne.
Mr Mobutu's prolonged absence has raised fears among European politicians and diplomats that the mineral-rich Central African nation could disintegrate.
But the Banyamulenge rebellion has broken the stalemate over Africa's worst refugee crisis and got the Hutu refugees, who cost the world $1 million a day in aid, moving from camps with birth rates among the world's highest.
Some diplomats say western donors will see the crisis as the beginning of an end-game and refuse to pay for the creation of new camps in the hope refugees can be coaxed back into Rwanda.