AN AID mission to an area of eastern Zaire not visited by United Nations officials for weeks has discovered thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees, many on the verge of death, UN officials said yesterday.
Aid officials who travelled by rail to Ubolo village south of Kisangani distributed 26 tonnes of food before leaving with 468 refugees, mainly children.
"We found about 5,000 to 6,000 refugees near a village at kilometre 82 [50 miles] south of Kisangani," said Mr Julian Fleet, a UN refugee agency (UNHCR) official who led the mission. "Many people have died there and many more are on the verge of death."
The mission reached Ubolo on Saturday night and returned to Kisangani last night. Aid workers had to carry most of the refugees off the train to a ferry crossing the Zaire river, as they were too weak to walk.
"The local Zaireans have cared for them as best they could, but this is absolutely an emergency situation," Mr Fleet said. He said the refugees mobbed the train when it arrived at the village, with thousands pleading for food or begging to be taken out.
Aid workers have been barred from travelling further than 41 km (25 miles) south of Kisangani by Zairean rebels who now control the bulk of the country. Rebel soldiers sealed off the area after attacks on Biaro camp, about 41 km south of Kisangani which refugees blamed on local Zaireans and rebel soldiers.
Over 80,000 refugees fled Biaro and nearby Kasese camps after the attacks. The refugees are the remnants of nearly two million Hutus who fled Rwanda in 1994 to escape reprisal for the genocide of up to 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
UN officials said hundreds of Rwandan Hutu refugees have made their way almost 1,500 km (900 miles) across the breadth of Zaire and have begun appearing in the Congo. UNHCR spokesman Mr Peter Kessler said 50 refugees had been seen at Loukolela, 350 km northeast of Brazzaville.
To have reached this point, the refugees have cut through some of the most dense forest on earth and traversed scores of rivers in their eightmonth trek. Scores of refugees yesterday began arriving at Biaro Camp, about 41 km south of Kisangani, in the hope of joining a UN airlift back to Rwanda. The new arrivals said they had walked from Ubundu, over 100 km further south, after hearing the airlift had finally started.
Aid organisations believe over 200,000 refugees are still unaccounted for, but Rwandan officials insist only around 55,000 remain.