With only five days of food supplies left and up to 300,000 Hutu refugees on the move, the U.N. food agency announced Friday it would start a 20-day emergency food airlift to eastern Zaire.
The supplies would be sent to Bukavu, across the Ruzizi River from this southwestern Rwandan town.Fighting between Zairian troops and minority Tutsis has driven the Hutus from camps near Uvira, Zaire, 60 miles south of Bukavu, sending them fleeing into the nearby mountains.
In recent weeks, a number of smoldering Central African conflicts have concentrated in eastern Zaire, near its border with Rwanda and Burundi. International officials fear the volatile mixture of troops, rebels, hunger and ethnic conflict could erupt into large-scale bloodshed.
The crisis is an offshoot of the slaughter between Hutus and Tutsis that engulfed Rwanda and Burundi in 1994. Refugees, mostly Hutus, fled to eastern Zaire and have refused to go home.
The turmoil has prompted the Zairian government to try to expel ethnic Tutsis, known as the Banyamulenge, who have lived in eastern Zaire for 200 years. Zaire accuses Tutsi-led governments in neighboring Rwanda and Burundi of aiding the Banyamulenge, a charge both governments deny.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, told the U.N. Security Council on Friday that fighting between Zairian troops and the Banyamulenge is complicating the evacuation of refugees.
More than 1.1 million Rwandan Hutu refugees now live in some 40 camps in eastern Zaire. New reports say some Hutu refugees are attacking the Banyamulenge.
Hutus are the largest ethnic group in both Rwanda and Burundi, while in Zaire, Bantus are the majority.
Francis Mwanza, a spokesman for the Rome-based World Food Program, said Friday the massive movements of the refugees and impossibility of getting food to Bukavu overland made an airlift the only alternative. Zaire's border with Rwanda has been closed since Thursday.
Beginning this weekend, the relief operation will airlift food from Entebbe, Uganda, to Bukavu in three daily flights by a C-130 transport plane, Mwanza said.
"This will be only essential items, rations," Mwanza said.
The U.N. refugee agency has been criticized for continuing to care for the refugees, since Hutu rebels have been using the camps in Zaire to launch attacks against their home countries.
The Rwandan Hutus fled to Zaire in 1994 following a Hutu government-orchestrated massacre of a half-million Tutsis. Many don't want to go back for fear of reprisals.
Unconfirmed reports Friday said local Tutsi fighters had pulled back at least 18 miles south of Bukavu.