Rebels, Army Storm Goma Hutu Refugees From Rwanda Forced Deeper Into Zaire

Heavy fighting, punctuated by mortar blasts, raged today after Tutsi rebels and Rwandan forces stormed Goma and engaged Zairian troops in a battle for control of the city and its airport - the humanitarian lifeline for hundreds of thousands of refugees.

The initial attack on Friday was well-organized and well-armed attack, with the Rwandan army invading Goma by land and from several small boats that crossed Lake Kivu into Zaire.

The fighting still raged Saturday morning, and one Zairian soldier told reporters in Goma that his army still controls the city.

On Friday, shells arched low across the sky and slammed into the city, where the two sides exchanged fire with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades.

The barrage of cross-border artillery and mortar fire pounding Goma dwindled to only the occasional crackle of gunfire after nightfall Friday. Journalists pinned in their hotels were unable to survey the damage.

Nineteen Americans, many of them missionaries, were reported trapped in Goma and Bukavu, 60 miles south, State Department officials said. They had no details.

Laurent Desire Kaliba, a Tutsi rebel leader, told reporters in the frontier town of Uvira that Goma was the last major town along Zaire’s borders with Rwanda and Burundi not yet completely in rebel hands.

Other than parts of the Masisi forest northwest of Goma, Kaliba said his forces control all of Zaire’s South Kivu and North Kivu provinces.

In the Zairian capital, Kinshasa, Prime Minister Leon Kengo wa Dondo claimed his army still controlled both provinces.

Rebel Tutsis, backed by the Rwandan army, have occupied a vast portion of South Kivu, from Lake Tanganyika north to Lake Kivu. In North Kivu, rebel Tutsis control at least a 40-mile stretch along the Rwandan border to Uganda.

The rebel Tutsis and Rwandan army also succeeded in pushing Rwandan Hutu refugees deeper into Zaire.

The fighting is the latest violence to wreak havoc in Rwanda, Burundi and now eastern Zaire. Hutu extremists in Rwanda slaughtered some 500,000 Tutsis in 1994, then fled to Zaire when a Tutsi-led rebel army took control of the country.