Rebels set to attack Zaire town as refugees trek

[Reuter / Christian Jennings]

BENI, Zaire (Reuter) - Zairian rebels said Friday they were
preparing to attack a key town in eastern Zaire and an aid
agency reported more than 100,000 Rwandan refugees trekking
northwest in a huge column.
``We are moving toward Bunia tomorrow (Saturday),'' said a
Zairian rebel officer in the town of Beni, 85 miles southwest of
Bunia. ``The Mai-Mai are moving up now to Bunia.''
About 150 members of the Mai-Mai, a volatile militia group
which practices witchcraft, were in Beni. In their advance north
and west since October, the Tutsi Banyamulenge rebels have been
using them to terrify Zairean troops into fleeing.
Aid sources said that Bunia, which the rebels originally
claimed to have seized last Tuesday, was still in the hands of
the Zairian army which had received airborne troop
reinforcements from Kisangani, the largest city in the region.
In Kisangani Friday, Nicholas Louis of the medical aid
agency Medecins sans Frontieres said more than 100,000 Rwandan
refugees had arrived at the town of Walikale.
At one stage refugees flowed into Walikale, 60 miles west of
the Rwandan border, at 20 every second. ``It was like a tidal
wave and they are still pouring in, thousands upon thousands,''
said Louis, in radio contact with towns in the area.
He said that by Thursday morning a vanguard of about 1,500
refugees had staggered into the town of Lubutu, 110 miles
further west from Walikale, on the road to Kisangani.
``Many of them are very weak and they are dying on the
road... The biggest cause of death is malaria,'' said Louis,
adding they were clearly some of those who went missing after
rebels seized control of the area from the Zairean army.
Camps with some 1.2 million people broke up and more than
500,000 Rwandans went home. But foreign reconnaissance flights
found only a fraction of the remaining hundreds of thousands.
Lt. Gen. Maurice Baril, the Canadian general in charge of a
multinational force for eastern Zaire, said in Nairobi Friday he
would return to rebel-held Zaire for more information on the
plight of refugees in the countryside.
The small multinational force based in Uganda has been
unable to deploy in Zaire because of opposition both from the
Kinshasa government and the rebels.
A fight for Bunia is widely expected to be fierce because
many of the troops at the garrison are natives of the town and
they have been strengthened by units of the elite presidential
guard from Kinshasa.
The Mai-Mai take their name from the Swahili word for water
and fight in family groups armed with weapons including rifles,
crossbows, slingshots, spears and home-made shotguns.
They believe bullets will turn to water after they have been
innoculated with a secret vaccine. Tribally of Zairian Hunde and
Nande origin, their main apparent motive for fighting is loot.
But the fragile hold the Banyamulenge have over the Mai-Mai
seems to be weakening, possibly as they are taking casualties.
With a garland of mango leaves on his head, an 11-year-old
Mai-Mai child in dirty clothes and clutching a hand grenade
refused to allow traffic past him on a Beni street Friday.
He ignored orders from the rebels until an officer hit him.
``They are very difficult to deal with,'' said another rebel
officer, noting they had fought on all sides to the conflict in
eastern Zaire. ``All they want to do is to kill and to loot.''
Bunia is on the main road westwards to Kisangani, Zaire's
fourth largest city, which has also been heavily reinforced.