THE number of Hutu refugees flown back to Rwanda from Zaire passed the 10,000 mark yesterday. Nearly 1,500 refugees left aboard six flights by mid afternoon, bringing to more than 10,000 the number repatriated since the airlift began in earnest on April 27th.
A spokesman for the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said the agency had dramatically scaled down its estimate of how many could take this route home. "We now think we will probably only move around 40,000 refugees back to Rwanda by air," a spokesman, Mr Peter Kessler said. He added later: "We have only so far located 40,000 but we will keep on looking for the refugees and keep repatriating them to Rwanda as they come out of the jungle. The airlift will go on for at least two months.
The UN had hoped to airlift some 80,000 refugees encamped 40 km south of the northeast Zairean city of Kisangani, but they fled their camps after attacks by local villagers and Zairean rebels. Some 40,000 have since trickled back, many of them with horrendous machete, axe and bullet wounds from the attacks. They reported that in the dense forests surrounding their camps hundreds had died of wounds, hunger or disease.
At Biaro yesterday more than 70 corpses were lying by the side of the road awaiting burial in mass graves which local Red Cross workers were digging. They had all died overnight.
Thousands of skeletal refugees were lining the entrance to the camp, waiting for the daily aid convoy that was again delayed and frustrated by rebel bureaucracy. Mr Kessler said rebel soldiers held up yesterday's convoy from Kisangani for over three hours on the grounds that it needed permission from the governor to travel.
A climate of mistrust continues to sour relations between aid workers and officials of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo Zaire.
The rebel leader, Mr Laurent Kabila, has promised aid agencies free access to all areas under his control but UN officials still cannot go more than 40 km south of Kisangani.
"The cooperation is insufficient," Mr Kessler said. "Every day we are inching forward but we are not able to make the strides necessary to do the job properly."
The UNHCR also said that the Angolan government had denied its officials access to thousands of Rwandan refugees camped along the northern border with Zaire.