Hundreds of Rwandan Hutu refugees have made their way almost 900 miles across the breadth of Zaire and have begun appearing in the Congo, United Nations officials said Sunday.
Peter Kessler, spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said 50 refugees had been seen by aid officials at Loukolela, about 200 miles northeast of Brazzaville.He said a western missionary at Liranga, about 30 miles further east, had reported over 2,600 refugee arrivals in the past few days.
"We had a team confirm the Loukolela arrivals and hope to do the same for Liranga in the next day or so," Kessler told Reuters.
Loukolela, situated on the swampy convergence of the Zaire and Ubangui rivers, lies opposite the similarly named Zairian town of Lukolela.
To have reached this point, the refugees have cut through what is considered some of the most dense forest on earth and traversed scores of rivers in their eight-month trek.
The refugees were among more than 300,000 who fled west in October from their camps on the Zaire-Rwanda border rather than join more than a million other Hutu refugees who returned home when Zairian rebels began an offensive that has taken them virtually to Kin-shasha.