Zaire Rebels Capture Refugee Camp

Zairian rebels said Sunday that they had captured the Tingi-Tingi refugee camp, driving tens of thousands of refugees north toward the government stronghold of Kisangani, which the rebels say is their next target.

Nyembwe Kazadi, a spokesman for rebel leader Laurent Kabila, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that rebels faced little resistance from government forces when they took Tingi-Tingi and the nearby town of Lubutu on Saturday.

There was no immediate way to confirm the report.

Since September, when the revolt began, Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire has captured a 900-mile strip of eastern Zaire and is pressing steadily west towards Kisangani, the country’s third-largest city.

“They are bombing us from Kisangani. We won’t just cross our hearts and wait for them,” said Kazadi, who said he had just spoken to Kabila.

Kazadi said another column of rebels was headed for the northwestern town of Gbadolite, where Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko has a jungle hideaway. The rebels’ ultimate aim is to overthrow the Zairian ruler, who has been in power for three decades.

“This is a national liberation (war). It is not something in a particular area,” he said.

However, he said, the rebels were willing to return to peace talks in South Africa with Zaire’s government.

“The negotiation windows are open,” he said. “The ball is on the Zairian side. Let’s wait for them and hear what is their story.”

The BBC said tens of thousands of Hutu refugees are on their way from Tingi-Tingi to Kisangani, 385 miles to the north, and that Kabila has offered to allow United Nations workers access to the refugees to ease their journey.

International aid workers abandoned Kisangani on Saturday after signs the Tingi-Tingi refugees planned to flee the camp in anticipation of the rebel assault.

The World Food Program said it left about 500 tons of food in Kisangani and a smaller amount in Tingi-Tingi that could last about a week.

The 170,000 refugees who had been staying in Tingi-Tingi settled there after being driven from camps further east. They had fled Rwanda for the camps in 1994, fearing retribution for the Hutu-sponsored genocide of about a half million people, most of them Tutsis.

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