 The seizing of Goma (723K/19 sec.) |
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As aid workers flee Zaire, refugees confront epic disaster
November 2, 1996
Web posted at: 9:45 p.m. EST (0245 GMT)GOMA, Zaire (CNN) -- With the world's biggest international aid effort shattered by fighting, more than a million refugees in eastern Zaire confront an epic calamity that the rest of the world is now powerless to prevent.
Caught in the crossfire of vicious ethnic fighting, at least 700,000 of the 1.1 million Rwandan Hutu refugees who used to live in camps in eastern Zaire have scattered throughout the rugged hills and forests along Zaire's frontiers with Rwanda and Burundi.
"They are in the hands of God," said Panos Moumtzis, spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency in Goma, a regional capital that is the administrative center for relief operations.
Michele Quintaglie
World Food Program"We were caught in the crossfire ..."
(170K/15 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)Panos Moumtzis
United Nations Refugee
Agency, Goma"People are eating leaves ..."
(179K/16 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)Michele Quintaglie
World Food Program"There are still people doing their jobs ..."
(128/12 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)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: Others are unaccounted for.
Painful dilemma
The recent fighting has presented aid workers with a painful dilemma: stay and help the refugees through a chaotic bloodbath or flee to safety in Rwanda.
This weekend, they chose the latter. "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.
More than 130 foreign aid workers used a lull in the fighting for control of Goma, until this week the nerve center for the massive relief operation, to dash across the border to the Rwandan town of Gisenyi, leaving in a caravan of about 40 vehicles.
But many aid workers, said Moumtzis, left with a "guilty conscious," fearing that the refugees left behind may starve or be massacred.
"It was one of the most difficult decisions of our lives. The prospects for the Rwandans and the Zairians are disastrous."
-- Aid worker Panos Moumtzis
Refugees 'just sat down to die
Tutsi rebels, believed to be backed by Rwanda's Tutsi- dominated army, stormed the frontier town Friday in a well- planned attack. Gunfire and mortar exchanges continued to rock Goma early Saturday, but by afternoon the fighting apparently had eased
By Saturday night, much of Goma, a key base for the Zairian army, was in the hands of the rebels.
With the aid workers gone, refugees already are dying of hunger, aid workers say. Most vulnerable are children, many of whom suffer from malnutrition and diarrhea and could die without treatment within hours.
A group of refugees from the Zaire camp of Katale reportedly "just sat down to die," said CARE International's Mark Richardson, who was in radio contact with the refugees.
"They have had no water for four or five days. These are the old, the sick, the vulnerable, the children."
-- Mark Richardson, CARE
The camp of Mugunga, west of Goma near the scenic shores of Lake Kivu, is the world's biggest refugee city west of Goma, where some 400,000 Rwandan exiles are waiting for salvation or death. Among them are thousands of armed Hutus like those who were behind the 1994 genocide of up to a million Tutsis and other victims.
Frank Cawkwell of CARE-Australia, the last international aid worker to quit Mugunga a couple of days ago, said all remaining food -- enough for seven days -- was being handed out to stop looting.
Aid workers fear that cholera and dysentery, the fastest killers in such desperate conditions, could soon return.
"With our departure there is not a single relief worker in the entire eastern Zaire region," said Moumtzis. "They are on their own."
Fearing the worst, international organizations tried to devise a way to cope with the grim situation. France's influential Le Monde newspaper said the European Union was considering opening "humanitarian corridors" in Zaire, guarded by troops possibly from France, Belgium and South Africa, to help the refugees.
Related stories:
- International aid workers flee crisis in eastern Zaire - November 2, 1996
- Fighting in Zaire escalates along with war rhetoric - November 1, 1996
- Aid workers caught in heavy Zaire fighting - October 31, 1996
- Archbishop killed as rebels rout Zairian army - October 30, 1996
- Zaire, Rwanda edge closer to war - October 30, 1996
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