Rwandan Hutu Refugees Stalled At Border

Tens of thousands of refugees hoping to leave their increasingly violent host country were stalled Saturday, barred from entering neighboring Tanzania but unwilling to go back to their camps.

About 40,000 people - Rwandans who fled their homeland during last year’s civil war - were stuck in hastily created squatter camps on the road near Gashoho, about 25 miles from the border.

They had begun a march to Tanzania on Thursday, but that country closed its border Friday, saying it couldn’t absorb any more refugees.

Tanzania already houses 600,000 Rwandan refugees, some of the more than 2 million who fled to neighboring countries last July after Tutsi rebels defeated the former Hutu regime.

That regime is blamed for a massacre of up to 500,000 Tutsis during the three-month war. Most of the refugees are Hutus, who feared they would become targets for revenge attacks.

The latest refugee exodus was prompted by an attack Monday in one of seven Rwandan refugee camps in Burundi. Aid workers said 12 Rwandans were killed and 22 wounded in the attack.

Paul Stromberg, a U.N. refugee agency spokesman in Rwanda, said the refugees also were frightened by fighting in Ngozi, in north-central Burundi, and by rumors that Rwandan Tutsis would cross the border to carry out massacres on April 7 to avenge last year’s genocide.

In Rumonge, a town in southern Burundi, 22 people were killed in clashes between security forces and armed civilians, Burundian radio reported Saturday.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees offered the Rwandan refugees rides back to their camps in Burundi, believing they would be safer there. A few hundred accepted, but Burundian soldiers stopped the convoy of six trucks and turned it back. The reason was unclear.

There was no sign Tanzania would relent and reopen its border.