Rwandans Start Move To New Land Violence In Burundi Forces Another Move

An estimated 20,000 Rwandan refugees, fleeing violence in Burundi, have begun a two-day trek to sanctuary in yet another country.

The Rwandan Hutus, who fled their homeland a year ago, were on the road from central and northcentral Burundi to Tanzania, spokesman Paul Stromberg of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said Thursday.

They were responding to an attack by armed men on Majuri, one of seven refugee camps in northern Burundi, and violence in Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura, which has prompted an exodus to Zaire.

Twelve Rwandan refugees were killed and 22 wounded in the attack Monday at Majuri. Officials said it was unclear who was responsible.

The relief agency CARE reported that it expected 50,000 to 100,000 Rwandan refugees to leave for Tanzania, according to a statement released by the organization’s headquarters in Atlanta.

“We’re mobilizing, but we can only hope it won’t reach the size and scale of the disaster in Rwanda,” Susan Farnsworth, CARE’s director in Tanzania, said in the statement.

More than 1 million Rwandans fled civil war and genocide in that country last year. About 200,000 went to Burundi. Extremist Hutu militias associated with Rwanda’s former Hutu-led government were blamed for most of the killings of as many as 500,000 people. The majority of the victims were Tutsis.

Rwanda and neighboring Burundi have about the same makeup in population - 85 percent Hutu and 15 percent Tutsi - and Burundi, too, has suffered ethnic violence that has killed thousands.

Because the balance of power is different in Burundi, aid workers and U.N. officials don’t expect killings on a Rwandan scale. None, however, rules out the possibility.

Some Hutu refugees said they also feared attacks by Tutsi militias if violence forced aid workers to leave Burundi.

“We are trying to assist them and underline that the aid community is staying in Burundi,” Stromberg said.

Burundian Hutus fled to Zaire over the weekend after Tutsi militiamen, backed by the Tutsi-dominated army, killed at least 150 people and burned homes in Bujumbura.