Word: goma
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...more refugees have set up home in filthy, sprawling & camps. The human wave, augmented each day by new arrivals, is rapidly overwhelming the resources of a town that cannot even boast the rudimentary air and road links that allowed international aid groups to get supplies and medicine to Goma...
...safety in Zaire, many Hutu may head instead across Rwanda's southern border into Burundi, where tensions between resident Hutu and Tutsi -- and the 230,000 Rwandan refugees already camped there -- are near breaking point. For now, each new arrival pushes Bukavu another notch closer to the horrors at Goma, where epidemics of cholera and dysentery have killed at least 25,000. To prevent a similar refugee crisis, aid agencies are rushing food, water and medicine into the vicinity of Cyangugu in hopes of forestalling a mass departure. But if the humanitarian diplomacy fails, the images at Bukavu may soon...
...million Tutsi civilians during three months of warfare. Last month, when they were defeated by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front, the Hutu soldiers spread rumors that the new government was killing Hutu civilians, igniting the panic that drove more than a million refugees across the border to Goma. Now, as an army in exile, these same men prolong the nightmare by discouraging their hungry, disease-ridden compatriots from returning home. Next, they defiantly vow to resume...
Everywhere one looks in Goma, swaggering soldiers are mistreating those they are meant to protect. They cut to the front of ration lines reserved for malnourished civilians. In a special military camp, they drive wood-laden trucks, while elsewhere refugees shaking with sickness must tote fuel by hand. But mostly they simply loaf, squatting outside their tents, guzzling home- brewed banana beer and smoking marijuana until their eyes take on a red, glassy light. "These soldiers could be distributing food, keeping the roads clear, looking after orphans," says Martin Collier, a driver with the aid group Assist. "Instead, they just...
...only are there enough of them -- 30,000 in Goma, 8,000 more south of Lake Kivu, and 2,000 in the French safe zone in southwest Rwanda -- but they are surprisingly well organized. Units have stayed together, and the command structure is intact. Wounded soldiers are visited every day by their colonel, twice a week by the army's Chief of Staff. While other refugees starve, the Rwandan military receive not just rations but something even more important: money, in the form of Rwandan francs brought by the fleeing former government from Kigali. "Every soldier continues to receive...