Word: zairian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Unfortunately, the latest crisis in the region seems to be less familiar and less newsworthy. The Zairian government, which sympathizes with the Tutsis, has attacked Hutu refugee camps within its borders, spurring a massive flight of sickly Hutus into the countryside. More than 500,000 refugees have walked hundreds of miles, attempting to return to Rwanda, already the most over-crowded country in Africa. And as the conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis overflows into Zaire, the refugees' situation is rapidly deteriorating. Last month, U.N. officials touring the area visited a Zairian refugee camp with 400,000 inhabitants...
...says TIME's Peter Graff. Sources say that Mobutu has weeks, possibly months, to live, but if he has an agenda for his last days other than trying to fight off prostate cancer, he isn't saying. Government officials say Mobutu's return will revitalize the army and restore Zairian pride, and turn the tide against the rebellion in the east. Yet although the evening news Monday reported that rebel leader Laurent Kabila had been "trembling" since he heard of the President's return, Mobutu brings no army with him. The outgunned Zairian forces have been consistently beaten and humiliated...
GOMA, Zaire: Rwandan refugees and displaced Zairians began flocking toward home today as if the doors to their cells suddenly had been flung open, and across the world, diplomats were crossing their fingers. A Tutsi offensive had driven Hutu forces westward into Zaire, potentially forcing the Hutu militias to relinquish control of the bursting Mugunga refugee camp that has served as a barren purgatory to more than 1 million people, and as cover for thousands of militiamen hiding from their enemies. A significant exodus would greatly ease the need for the U.N. humanitarian and military intervention that has been hurriedly...
...Hutu threat intensifies, indigenous tribes have been fighting back. North of Goma a militia calling itself the Bangalima, after a famous tribe of warriors from the central Zairian rain forest, recently launched a series of attacks on Zairian army posts and local Hutu. Avid fetishists, often fighting naked and using charms that they believe turn enemy bullets into water, the Bangalima fighters have sworn to drive all Hutu from Zaire. A letter received last month by the local representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees threatened a "bloodbath" in the refugee camps if all 750,000 Hutu were...
...Zairian military recently launched an operation to quell what they are calling a rebel uprising by indigenous militia. Long feared for their corrupt and brutal ways, the unpaid combat troops have scored a few successes against the rebels but in the process have spread terror throughout North Kivu. At the Lake Edward fishing village of Vitshumbi, 62 miles north of Goma, paracommandos stormed in behind a barrage of mortar fire last month, killing 15 Bangalima combatants and, according to local human-rights workers, herding 34 suspected collaborators into local churches and gunning them down. A mother of five reported being...