Citation
KINSHASA, April 11 (Reuter) - More than 1,000 Rwandans have crossed the
border into neighbouring Zaire to escape bloody reprisals back home, an
international aid agency reported on Monday.
The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) said the flood of
refugees, most of them from the minority Tutsi tribe, started on
Thursday, the day after the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were
killed in a rocket attack on their airplane.
The refugees are streaming into the far eastern Zairean town of Goma,
where they are being met by aid organisations such as Medecins sans
Frontieres, Oxfam and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
A spokesman for the ICRC said he was hearing confused reports of
fighting just across the border from Zaire, but had no confirmation of
what was happening.
The French, Belgian and British embassies in Kinshasa were trying to
organise the evacuation of two groups of Western nationals who fled
into the Zairean lakeside towns of Goma and Bukavu.
They are due to be ferried by plane to the Burundi capital of
Bujumbura, where they were will join the main evacuation being
organised by the Belgian government.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
