CNN - Refugees vanish; Zaire rebels accused of 'slow extermination'

April 25, 1997
Web posted at: 4:15 p.m. EDT (2015 GMT)

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KISANGANI, Zaire (CNN) -- An aerial search confirmed Friday that some 85,000 Rwandan Hutu refugees fled into the Zairian jungle, victims of a rebel "policy of slow extermination," the United Nations said. It hinted that those responsible could face international prosecution.

"We didn't see any refugees," said Carlos Haddad, Kisangani representative of the U.N. World Food Program (WFP), after flying 58 miles south of Zaire's northeastern capital.

"The forest is so dense that either they are hiding somewhere or they went west to Opala," Haddad said of the 55,000 refugees who fled a camp at Kasese and 30,000 who left a camp at Biaro, 25 miles south of Kisangani.

Even with access to medics at the camps, the refugees had been dying at a rate of about 60 a day, and U.N. officials said the death toll was bound to climb as refugees fled deeper into the Zairian jungle.

'Thousands may die'

In Kisangani, Paul Stromberg, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said the search appeared to show that people passed further south of Biaro and Kasese toward Ubundu.

The refugee agency said earlier it had received reports suggesting Biaro had been emptied.

A U.N. mission allowed to reach Kasese on Thursday found no refugees, alive or dead, after the camp was sealed off for four days from aid workers and journalists.

While many of the Rwandan Hutu refugees are former militiamen suspected of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, many others, including women and children, are innocent victims.

"Thousands of vulnerable refugees may die in Zaire's rainforests without food, medicine or drinking water," Stromberg said in Kisangani.

Rebels deny refugee slaughter

The Zairian rebels, who have captured half of Zaire and appear poised to end the 31-year rule of President Mobutu Sese Seko, are accused of slaughtering Rwandan refugees in a camp south of the eastern city of Kisangani. There is no outright evidence, however.

The rebels, led by Laurent Kabila, blame the refugee crisis on poor planning by U.N. aid agencies.

Kabila has pledged to support an independent probe of what's happening in the remote jungles and punish any of his troops if they are proved to have committed atrocities.

Correspondent Jim Clancyand Reuters contributed to this report.