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Officials from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said aid was due to arrive Monday. Many people had not eaten for three days.
Stanislas Nkuliza, who heads the local cottage hospital, said there was quite simply nothing for them in his dispensary.
He keeps just enough stock to satisfy the needs of the 40,000 people in the area.
"We have only five wounded among the refugees, three of them with hack wounds and two with bullet wounds," he said.
A five-year-old girl on her mother's back was waiting to be taken to hospital in neighbouring Butare.
A bayonet had ripped open her cheek, and her skin was pocked with brown marks. Her eyes were vacant.
Nkuliza said there were plenty of cases of sexually transmitted diseases, amoebic dysentry, which has been ravaging northern Burundi for most of the year, measles, diarrhoea, conjunctivitis, skin diseases, and malaria.
"We need basic medicines to fight all these diseases," he said, hoping that the aid on its way would meet those needs.
Refugee Jean Nambazimana, who came from the village of Busiga, said: "We haven't eaten yet, but we are among the lucky ones. So many of us were killed.
Others around him told their own stories of tragedy in their Kirundi tongue.
"They fired at us, they even came in helicopters," said Francois Mbanyansekera, the teacher in the village of Mwumba. He said it was a "miracle" he got out with his wife and their seven children. "We came across the river on foot, avoiding the roads."
Maria-Aloise, 53, was not so lucky. Her own children were killed, but she was determined to bring her grandchildren to safety in Rwanda.
"We ran through the hills, we were stumbling all the time. But I had to bring the children. You know, when they want to kill a people, they kill the children first."
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AFP AFP
