Tutsi rebels traded mortar and small-arms fire with troops defending the provincial capital of east Zaire, ignoring U.N. pleas to clear a way for the half-million refugees fleeing the fighting.
The governor of South Kivu province went on the radio to urge residents to remain in their homes in Bukavu, at the south end of Lake Kivu.But Sunday's fighting sent thousands of residents streaming west and north as Zairian troops clashed with the Tutsi fighters known as Banyamulenge, positioned only three miles to the south. Near Cyangugu, soldiers of Rwanda's Tutsi-led army exchanged cross-border fire with Zairian troops.
The Tutsi fighting force in Zaire emerged in September after attacks on Tutsis by Zairian troops and Hutu militias. The Tutsi uprising had sent more than 300,000 Burundian and Rwandan Hutu refugees fleeing from camps near Uvira, Zaire, scattering into the mountains of the countryside.
Another 200,000 refugees have joined the exodus since Friday and Saturday, when a barrage of artillery fire hit the Kibumba refugee camp in Zaire's Goma region, 125 miles north of Bukavu.
The U.N. high commissioner for refugees said at least four people were killed and 100 wounded. Because of the confusion created by the fighting, witness reports that many more had died could not be confirmed.
About 1,500 Rwandan refugees and 3,000 Zairians sought shelter Sunday by crossing into northern Rwanda.
The remaining Kibumba refugees were said to be arriving at Mugunga camp, west of Goma, at a rate of 5,000 an hour.
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata asked combatants to stop attacking refugees and to open escape corridors for those caught in fighting.
"What hurts me most are reports that women and children are again caught in this terrible tragedy," Ogata said in a statement. "The first refugees to reach the hospital in Goma after the attacks this weekend were 36 women and children, all of them suffering from shrapnel wounds.