Chaos reigns as gunfire greets refugees and VIP general

WE were waiting for refugees. Instead we got gunfire. First one extended burst of automatic fire, then another.

Refugees, aid workers, journalists, they all dived for cover. A further round of gunfire from the surrounding hills and most of the jeeps and Land Rovers were soon hurtling away from the roadblock.

The refugees who had arrived were left to cower behind bushes in the rain, as the trucks that were meant to transport them fled empty towards Goma.

Gen Maurice Baril, the Canadian head of the proposed International Force to Zaire, would have heard the gunfire, having passed along this road only a half hour before.

After visiting the head of the Tutsi rebels, Mr Laurant Kabila, in Goma, Gen Baril was on his way to Minova, 20 km from Sake, where more than 20,000 refugees were arriving yesterday.

Mr Kabila's teenage soldiers, melted away from the checkpoint they had been manning, understandably in the circumstances. Within minutes, however, they were replaced by the even younger soldiers of the Mai Mai, a local, militia with a mystical name and a bad attitude.

Never mind that their helmets were too big for their heads. These boys knew how to ask for a "present" from the remaining media teams. Having extracted $200 from a French television crew, they asked for more, and eventually settled for taking their car and equipment.

Small wonder the refugees, some of them on the road for more than a month, had said they were more afraid of passing through the Mai Mai area than of going home to Rwanda.

If this is the chaos that reigns on the day when Gen Baril arrives as a VIP, what would happen were an international force to come here?

Later, the Tutsi rebels blamed the shooting on Interahamwe fighters hiding out in the steep hills around Sake. Fierce fighting between the two groups has continued until recently in the direction of Masisi, 20 km to the north.

Others blame the Mai Mai, recent allies of Mr Kabila's forces, who formerly sided with the Zaireans in this many sided, messy conflict.

No one was injured in the shooting, which was witnessed by aid workers with Concern and Trocaire.

Down the road, the stream of refugees crawled past Mugenga camp and on to Goma and the frontier with Rwanda.

Trucks rented by the UNHCR in Uganda ferried many of the refugees to the border, but others had to walk.

Even now, after so long on the road, the vast majority appear to be in good health. Most are tired and hungry but say they are happy to be going home.

The inhabitants of this hapless part of Zaire are if anything poorer than most Rwandans.

Mugenga itself home to 400,000 people until a fortnight ago, now presents a post apocalyptic vision out of a Mad Max film. Surrounded by volcanoes wrapped in mist, the structures on this vast expanse of lava like rock have been quickly razed to the ground.

Rats scuttle through the rubbish, plumes of smoke rise at regular intervals, where local Zaireans are making charcoal from the wood left over from the shelters. A team of local aid workers continues to search for bodies, which they bury in mass graves covered with lime.

While the refugees headed for Rwanda, hundreds of locals passed in the opposite direction, their backs bowed with loads of firewood, foraged in the camp. By the road a single tall sunflower reached for the sky, a splash of colour in a monochrome world.

A roadside sign reminds us that this area once formed part of Virunga National Park. It says: "Visitors are asked to leave the area as they found it and not to cut down the trees."