See you there.

Nice mustache ... how long were you in the South African Police Force?

I have just returned from a wonderful trip home to Zimbabwe where things have certainly improved since the economy was dollarised — although everyone would rather the country had adopted the rand instead of the greenback, since all imports and exports go via South Africa anyway.

While back home I decided — much to the amusement of friends and family — to brave the vagaries of Zim bureaucracy try to get a replacement for my long-lost driver’s licence. Joining me on what promised to be a Kafka-esque experience was an old friend, Micheal Scott, who also wanted to try to get a duplicate.

For $10, we had three black and white pictures taken from a photo studio opposite the dreaded Central Vehicle Registry before entering its hallowed doors, and were steered by a concierge-type person to an unpromising looking side room.  First impressions were not good: the room looked as if it hadn’t had a lick of paint since independence in 1980,  the benches were grooved by the indentations of tens of thousands of buttocks that had endured lengthy waits and there was only one duty person, sitting regally behind a perspex screen with a speaking hole placed  (deliberately, probably) at an angle that forces the petitioners to almost supplicate themselves.

Mike and I were told to fill in a form that asked all sorts of questions I couldn’t answer. All I knew was that I had obtained my learners licence in Bulawayo in 1978, whereas Mike had the date of issue of his, the original number and, most importantly, his national ID card number — something I had never go around to obtaining.

The clerk pointed out the paucity of information on my form before handing both to a supervisor in an office behind him who then left with our forms. Surprisingly, less than 10 minutes later she was back, and handed the forms back to the original clerk.

He summoned Mike and then, in full baritone clearly audible to everyone said: “You have asked for a duplicate licence, but you applied for one in 2000 that you have never collected” and proceeded to produce the said document much to our stupified amazement. Sure enough, from somewhere in the bowels of the central registry, they had  found a duplicate licence that Mike had asked for 10 years ago. “You don’t need a new one now and this one has already been paid for,” said the clerk.

“Now Fox,” said the clerk. “You also want a duplicate but you applied for a replacement in 1983 … here it is,” and with a theatrical flourish this time produced my licence. No need to pay.

At this point Mike and I were reduced to a pair of giggling schoolboys. For all the woes that Zimbabwe has endured over the years, I can’t think of another country where this would happen. In 1983, when I applied for the replacement, I was working at the Bulawayo Chronicle. (The mustache in the picture makes me look older than my 21 years but devillishly handsome, don’t you think …).

I am still amazed that it survived for 27 years in the archives of the Central Vehicle Registry but it makes me think that despite the best effort of Mugabe and his cronies to destroy everything that worked in Zimbabwe, there is still something to build on when he goes.

As an addendum, my brother found my dad’s last driving licence — issued in 1977 when he was 40 and the country was still Rhodesia. They say the acorn never falls far from the tree …

Chip off the old block ... Jason King last seen in Bulawayo circa 1977.

Dr Zakir Naik ... myths understood

The local cable company in Kabul carries Peace TV, a noble effort to spread the word of Islam and correct misunderstandings about the religion. I find it seductive viewing, but like Fox News or porn, you can only watch about 15 minutes before you start channel surfing. A bit of Internet “research” shows that it was founded by Zakir Naik, an Indian who trained as a medical doctor but has spent much of his adult life as an Islamic preacher, following in the tradition of his hero, the South African da’wa exponent Ahmed Deedat.

There is no doubt he attracts huge crowds; his Islamic Research Foundation, the front for all his activities, has become big business on the sub-continent, in the Middle East and beyond the Islamic world to Europe and North America. He comes across no differently to the scores of oily televangelists that saturate American airwaves, with an ego that requires a personal TV channel to feed it.

In fairness he is not the only “preacher” to feature on Peace TV. There many others — including converts from Britain and the United States — but he is the one doing the continuity breaks between programs, striking stern poses to a backdrop of significant international events and helpfully quoting Koranic verses that he says means if viewers send him money, Allah will consider it “zakat”, a tithe that forms one of the five pillars of Islam.

Naik is considered by his fans to be a brilliant debater — and there is no doubt he knows his Koran, Bible and Torah inside out — but many of the programs are repeats of lectures on comparative religions he has given over the years. He is frequently introduced by his brother and preceded by some Koranic readings from his son (it is a family affair, after all…) and then he drones on, quoting chapter and verse from the relevant holy book, to argue why Islam is the one true religion of which both Judaism and Christianity foretold — if only you look closely enough.

For a dyed-in-the-wool atheist like yours truly, it is like listening to someone debate whether Batman, Spiderman or Superman is the greatest superhero, so the petty point-scoring over which particular fairytale is the most believable comes across as very immature — the sort of thing we were doing for a mental challenge at high school. He also has a shocking lisp and for some time I thought he was saying “myths understood” when in fact he meant “misunderstood”.

I was slightly inspired to write this by a friend who recently started an exciting magazine in southeast Asia called Aquila that is aimed at modern Muslim women and the challenges they face.

Don't judge a burqa by its cover

She, a thoroughly modern Muslim woman herself, posted a link to a great story that got a lot of international play about a Malaysian “American Idol”-style show to find the next star young imam — someone who might have a better connection with the younger generation, but who can pass on the message in a modern way without compromising values. The show provides both the message and the means to deliver it in a manner that embraces the global craze for reality-style TV .

The magazine and TV show are doing the same thing, in their own ways, but I was struck by how different their approach was to that of Peace TV, which remains conservative in both message and medium.

Aquila would horrify Dr Zakir Naik. If he had his way, entertainment would consist only of programming that had a religious or moral message. Entertainment is a distraction — much like women are — and have no place in an Islamic world.

So it was struck earlier today when I noticed, for the first time, a series of adverts on the right hand side of my page, and wondered what they say about me.

Currently in prime place is an advert for the PAP, reminding me, in case I had forgotten, how the party is serving the people of Singapore.

Directly below that is one that seduces me with the line “Date Ladies in Singapore” while immediately below that another advert offers “84% off IPL hair removal”.

So clearly the advertisers think I’m interested in a politically astute single Ah Lien or Mina who keeps a tidy garden…

Spot on, actually!

Aid workers travelling to Gheshm said the country was suffering an accute shortage of vowels

Dubai’s terminal 2 is the gateway to Satan’s bottom.

Unless you’ve had a reason to visit Baghdad, or Kabul, or Baku or Kish or any one of a dozen similar places that will never appear on a list of top tourist destinations, chances are you’ve never heard of Dubai’s terminal 2.

You look at the departure board in Terminal 1 and you see flights leaving for London, or Sydney, or Singapore or any one of dozens of comforting destinations. Look at the departure board of Terminal 2 and you see places you wouldn’t send your worst enemy — he’s there already.

You actually have to leave the airport to get from Terminal 1 to 2. There is allegedly an internal transfer, but I’ve never found it. So after leaving the cosmopolitan transit hall of 1 via possibly the world’s most expensive taxi ride, getting your passport stamped in and out, you end up in the strange place that is Terminal 2.

You can’t stop yourself from weighing up your fellow travelers.  Many are returning nationals, some clearly novice travelers, in mufti and with luggage made up mostly of heavily wrapped red, white and blue bundles — the Gucci for pilgrims.

It is definitely the terminal to Islamic destinations, and many of the passengers are outwardly Muslim, but there is also a representation of the former Soviet central Asian states in bad shiny suits and imitation Italian loafers.

Terminal 2 used to be not much more than a glorified hangar. but its been upgraded and now boasts a duty fre shop and a McDonalds — the last Big Mac for thousands of miles. Most of the customers are American contractors on nation-building exercises, many of them ex-armed forces and now working in security, and they buy burgers by the dozen to take with them — takeout to be delivered thousands of miles away.

Last burger before Baghdad .. . make mine a large portion of freedom fries

Kabul ... either dusty or muddy, take your pic.

An old schoolmate, Rob Cochrane, put me onto a colleague of his at a private security company that does protection for projects in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where international forces are too stretched to handle themselves.

Many of the contractors are ex-special forces from around the world, but Rob’s colleague came from a different route — he was an ex-Kiwi cop who was in their top SWAT-like unit but also a rugby player of some note. Dustin Watts is a big Kiwi bloke, probably not a pound heavier than when he was top of his game playing for the ill-fated Vikings before a spell in Ireland as player-coach of a club side.

The braai was held in a residential compound run by and for the security guys. Some of them lived with their clients, but the compound also serves as offices and a sort of guest house for people coming and going between contracts.

It has a very well-organised (and cheap)  bar for staff and their guests, and it is in a pleasant green garden — an oasis from the dust of Kabul.

There are about 20 or so people at the braai — almost all South Africans and fairly split between Bulls and Stormers fans — in other words, a lot of Dutchmen! They rose to the occasion, delivering an awesome braai of fantastic boerewors, whole fillets, lamb chops and  accompanying egg-potato sludge and green stuff.

The gathering was slightly muted by recent news that a couple of colleagues had been killed in a plane crash of a private domestic carrier Pammair.

Rescue workers and soldiers search for the remains of victims in an Afghan plane crash on Shapiri Ghar Mountain, 20 miles east of Kabul. The Kam Air Boeing 737 crashed on February 3, 2005 killing all 104 people on board. Pic: Fardin Waezi

Nobody has confidence in any Afghan airline and you try to find alternative means, but sometimes it is unavoidable. Testimony to the remoteness of the routes you fly in Afghanistan is the fact it took rescue workers four days to even locate the wreckage of the plane, which came down less than 100 kms north of the capital in the Hindu Kush.

I thoroughly enjoyed the match. The Crusaders were let down by nerves under the high ball, but the Bulls capitalised ruthlessly and owned the game from begining to end. In full flow they are impressive.

I didn’t stay for the second game, but I know the Stormers fans will be happy with the result.

So I’ll see them again this weekend for the showdown!

For those who don’t know the story, Pat Tillman was a professional American Football player with the Arizona Cardinals who gave it all up in the aftermath of Sept. 11 when he enlisted (with his professional baseball-playing brother) in the U.S. army rangers.

He served in Iraq before being deployed in Afghanistan (with his brother Kevin) where he was killed in what the U.S. military said was a contact with the Taliban but, after a terrible cover-up, it emerged was friendly fire.

Pat and Kevin Tillman in Saudi Arabia

Tillman had it all — a handsome, gifted athlete well loved by his wife, family, friends and fans — but using Tillman’s diaries and exhaustive interviews, Krakauer paints a picture of a young man who is an intelligent, deep thinker, strongly anti-Bush and his administration, a staunch atheist and very much against the Iraq war.

Nevertheless, he had joined the army to do service for his country. He never gave a single interview about his shock switch and he refused to accept the hero status that the authorities thrust on him and tried so hard to capitalise from.

It was an ironic scandal that the authorities tried to gain from Tillman’s death and a credit to his family that they refused to allow this to happen.

The strange-but-true aspect of the Tillman story is that while serving in Iraq, a war that deeply troubled him, he was part of the special forces operation that “rescued” Private Jessica Lynch, that poor girl who wandered into a shit storm and was “kidnapped” before being rescued in full technicolour by an administration desperate to paper over the deadliest day in the entire war for the Americans, with almost all the casualties coming from “friendly fire”.

It still amazes me that Rumsfeld and his cronies survived the fall out from that. They portrayed Lynch as a heroine who had gone down fighting before being badly injured and kidnapped by Iraqi troops or militia. The truth was her injuries, which were severe, had come from a humvee crash and she had been taken to a civilian hospital where she had been treated kindly, with some staff even donating blood for a transfusion. She she started recovering, the Iraqi medical staff put her in an ambulance and tried to drive her to American lines for better treatment, but they had to turn back when they were fired on by a U.S. checkpoint.

The raid to rescue her was ridiculous — there was simply nobody holding her. Tillman writes in his diaries about how he was disquieted by the whole affair. He would have gone mental at the lies the spun around his death.

I can’t recommend the book enough — even for those who are very much against Washington’s foreign adventures and, like me, are likely by instinct to dismiss Tillman as a naive, typical gung-ho American.

I expect a hollow jock, but Krakaur painted a portrait of a fascinating man; a genuine hero.

80 feared dead, 1,000 hurt in Africa blasts.

By David Fox

NAIROBI, Aug 7 (Reuters) – Up to 80 people were feared dead and over 1,000 injured in two huge car bomb attacks on Friday aimed at the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, police and witnesses said.

“Clearly this is a terrorist attack,” U.S. State Department spokesman Lee McClenny said in Washington.

A huge blast ripped through the Kenyan capital Nairobi at 10.35 am (0735 GMT) and was followed minutes later by one in the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam.

“At the moment we have 20 confirmed dead, but there are a lot of people trapped in the building (next to the U.S. embassy) – maybe another 60,” said a police official in the Kenyan capital.

Tanzanian police said two people died in the Dar es Salaam attack.

The Dar es Salaam explosion also caused minor damage to the French embassy nearby, the French Foreign Ministry said in Paris.

“A violent explosion at the U.S. embassy caused light material damage to the French embassy doown the street,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anne Gazeau-Secret said. There were no injuries among embassy personnel.

Police said the Kenyan bomb was aimed at the U.S. embassy, but Ufundi House next door, which houses small offices and a secretarial college, took the brunt of the explosion.

They said they believed the bomb had been planted in a car parked in an alley between the two buildings.

The blast almost levelled the five-storey Ufundi House and caused extensive damage to the embassy.

Rescue workers were trying desperately to dig their way into the piled high wreckage of Ufundi House to reach possibly dozens of people trapped inside.

Reporters saw 25 bodies being carried away.

Kenya’s KTN televison said some of the dead were passengers on a commuter bus passing by at the moment of the blast. Television pictures showed a badly damaged bus with a man apprently dead in the driver’s seat and others dead or injured inside.

In Dar es Saalam, police said the blast came from a car parked near the U.S. embassy in a residential suburb on the outskirts of the city.

No one has claimed responsibility for either attack.

Eda Rubia, a management consultant who was walking near the U.S. embassy in Nairobi when the blast happened, said: “I heard a loud bang then the whole place was shaking and within a split second glass was falling on my head,”

“It was strange … a big bang and then I was lying on the floor. All around me were people, bleeding,” said Simon Tafei, a messenger.

Hospital authorities in Nairobi said over 1,000 people were injured in the blast and issued an urgent appeal for blood.

“We have received more than 200 people,” said Mike Sheldon, administrator at the private Nairobi Hospital. “Some are very seriously injured.”

“It is all chaos,” an official at the city’s main Kenyatta Hospital said. “We are treating hundreds … too many, we can’t say.”

There, doctors and medical students were battling to deal with the overwhelming number of patients being brought in by ambulances, police cars, private cars and taxis.

U.S. ambassador Prudence Bushnell was superficially injured in the attack but was back at work, officials said.

U.S officials in Washington said U.S. citizens were among the dead and injured in the two attacks. At least two embassy officials were in serious condition at Nairobi hospital. Kenyan Trade Minister Joseph Kamotho was also injured.

The Nairobi blast rocked the city and a dense plume of smoke soared above the skyline.

The explosion blew the windows out of office buildings up to five blocks away and was heard five kilometers (three miles) from the city centre.

The scene became one of immediate chaos with hundreds of people trying to flee at the same time as thousands rushed to the scene to see what had happened. The city quickly became logjammed, causing extra problems for ambulances and rescue workers.

The charred bodies of the some victims lay in the street near mannequins blown out of the windows of nearby clothes shops. Scores of people were seen covered in blood from injuries caused by flying glass.

Telephone and satellite links between Kenya, Tanzania and the rest of the world were affected by the explosions with banks and other businesses coming to a standstill.

Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi immediately issued a statement condemming the attack and said the authorities would do anything possible “to bring the perpetrators of the heinous crime to book”.

Kenya and Tanzania have rarely been the scene of urban violence of this sort.

In 1979, however, the Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi was flattened by an explosion which killed several tourists.

It was claimed by a shadowy Arab group in retaliation for Kenya allowing Israeli troops to refuel in Nairobi during their raid on Uganda’s Entebbe airport to rescue hostages from a hijacked airplane.

(C) Reuters Limited 1998.

Rescuers dig through night for bomb survivors.

By David Fox

NAIROBI, Aug 7 (Reuters) – Two huge bomb blasts at U.S embassies in east Africa on Friday killed up to 80 people, injured about 1,200 and brought morning rush-hour carnage to the streets of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

Hundreds of blood-covered workers at the two embassies and nearby buildings ran screaming into the streets after the coordinated attacks in the Kenyan and Tanzanian capitals, which were barely 10 minutes apart.

Passengers in a bus caught by the Nairobi blast were incinerated in their seats.

President Clinton denounced the attacks as cowardly and inhuman and vowed to bring the bombers to justice.

Rescue workers dug through mountains of rubble for hours after the blast and continued into the night, desperately searching for survivors.

But already claims were surfacing that the bulk of the effort in Nairobi was being directed to rescuing embassy staff rather than local victims in nearby buildings.

No one claimed responsibility for either attack, but as recently as this week, Egypt’s banned Jihad group said it would retaliate for Washington’s help in extraditing Islamisists to Cairo from Albania.

An embassy spokesman in Nairobi said at least eight U.S. embassy staff or citizens were confirmed dead and seven others still missing after the Kenya blast and Clinton ordered American flags at diplomatic missions around the world be flown at half mast.

The United States was also sending emergency medical staff from Germany to help treat the injured and a Federal Bureau of Investigation team to probe the blasts.

A huge explosion ripped through Nairobi at 10.35 a.m. (0735 GMT) and was soon followed by another in the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam.

The timing – and the fact that both were car bombs and the targets U.S. embassies – left few observers doubting it was anything but a sophisticated, coordinated operation.

The scene in both capitals swiftly became chaotic, with one witness in Dar es Salaam saying the area looked like a war zone.

In Nairobi, scores of people were cut by flying glass as the explosion blew windows from office buildings up to five blocks away.

Hospital authorities in the Kenyan capital said over 1,200 people were injured in the blast and issued an urgent appeal for blood.

U.S. ambassador Prudence Bushnel

At one centre alone, the private Nairobi Hospital, administrator Mike Sheldon said: “We have received more than 200 people. Some are very seriously injured.”

The biggest toll was at Ufundi House, a five-storey office block that is home to a a dozen or so small businesses and also a secretarial college.

The building, next door to the embassy, caved in, crushing to death scores of people.

The army had taken over digging operations, but some volunteer workers complained that the intial effort had gone towards helping U.S. embassy staff despite it being clear that Ufundi House had been worse hit.

“The Americans did nothing to help us,” said Kariuki Chege, a volunteer who said he spent seven hours on the roof of Ufundi house.

Other workers echoed his sentiments.

“At the moment we have 37 people confirmed dead,” said Otieno Oyoo, a deputy commissioner of police. But he said dozens more were believed buried beneath Ufundi House and the death toll was expected to rise above 80.

A U.S. embassy official in Dar es Salaam said six people were killed and 58 injured in the Tanzanian blast. No Americans were among the dead, but several embassy staff were injured.

Police said the Kenyan bomb had been planted in a Mitsubishi Pajero car parked in an alley between the embassy and Ufundi House.

Eda Rubia, a management consultant who was walking near the embassy in Nairobi, said: “I heard a loud bang then the whole place was shaking and within a split second glass was falling on my head.”

“It is all chaos,” an official at Nairobi’s main Kenyatta Hospital said. “We are treating hundreds … too many, we can’t say.”

There, doctors and medical students were battling to deal with the overwhelming number of patients being brought in by ambulances, police cars, private cars and taxis.

U.S. Ambassador Prudence Bushnell was superficially injured in the attack but was back at work, officials said.

Kenyan Trade Minister Joseph Kamotho, whose office was next door to Ufundi House, was also injured and he was expected to remain in hospital overnight. Bushnell had just left Kamotho’s office after a meeting to discuss U.S.-Kenyan relations.

The Nairobi blast rocked the city and a dense plume of smoke soared above the skyline.

The charred bodies of the some victims lay in the street near mannequins blown out of the windows of nearby clothes shops.

Telephone and satellite links between Kenya, Tanzania and the rest of the world were affected by the explosions with banks and other businesses coming to a standstill.

Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi issued a statement condemming the attack and said the authorities would do everything possible “to bring the perpetrators of the heinous crime to book”. He later toured the scene and visited some of the injured.

Julius Meme, Kenya’s director of Medical Services, told Reuters that the response to appeals had been fantastic. “People have been donating blood, blankets, everything,” he said.

Kenya and Tanzania have rarely been the scene of urban violence of this sort.

In December 1980, however, the Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi was flattened by a blast which killed 20 people and injured 80.

It was claimed by a shadowy Arab group in retaliation for Kenya allowing Israeli troops to refuel in Nairobi during their raid on Uganda’s Entebbe airport to rescue hostages from a hijacked aircraft.

(C) Reuters Limited 1998.

Sense of order returns to scene of Kenya bomb blast.

By David Fox

NAIROBI, Aug 8 (Reuters) – Rescue workers on Saturday battled to try to reach at least five people believed to be alive but trapped deep in the rubble caused by a devastating car bomb attack on the U.S. embassy 24 hours earlier.

As they struggled to cope with the devastation caused by the collapse of a five-storey building almost levelled by the blast next to the U.S. embassy, a sense of order seemed finally to have settled on the scene.

Kenyan and British army engineers appeared to have taken charge of the operation and – aided by gun-toting United States marines – have cleared the area of all but essential personel.

The first hours after the blast were marked by the sort of Kenyan public spiritedness that at once both helped and hindered the operation.

The car bomb exploded on Friday morning from a Mitsubishi Pajero parked between the United States embassy and Ufundi House, an office block which is home to several small businesses as well as a secretarial college.

The blast punched out windows from buildings as far away as five blocks, showering thousands of pedestrians in the city centre with glass and masonry.

In seconds the scene became one of complete pandemonium.

As scores of injured people ran in terror, blood streaming from their wounds, hundreds more sprinted towards the site to gawk at the spectacle.

Nairobi’s traffic – never the smoothest on a good day – swiflty ground to a halt, causing extra problems for a fleet of cars, ambulances and taxis trying to ferry the injured to hospitals.

Hundreds of volunteers from the thousands of unemployed Nairobi residents who roam the streets each day in search of work descended on the bomb site, literally tearing at the rubble with their hands in the hunt for survivors.

One man was plucked alive from rubble more than five hours later, grimacing in pain but bellowing “God is great” as he was carried off on a stretcher.

But the darker side of Nairobi life also emerged.

Police said six volunteers were beaten up by enraged crowds and later arrested after being caught looting the site and stripping the dead of valuables.

It has become a sad but inevitable consequence of almost every Kenyan traffic accident or other disaster in the past few years as the country struggles in the grip of a moribund economy.

Arguments broke out among volunteer rescue workers, police, government officials, journalists and the army.

The scene at the bombers’ target, the U.S embassy next door, was a complete contrast.

Marines kept the crowd at bay, swiftly errected black cloth around the embassy fence and focused their efforts on the embassy.

Their action led to charges by scores of volunteers that the American were only interested in their own citizens and were not concerned with the Kenyan dead and injured in the building next door.

At least eight U.S. citizens died in the blast and five others are unnaccounted for. At Ufundi House, the confirmed death toll is over 70 with an unknown number still buried in the rubble.

Member of Parliament Agustine Kathangu, who visited the scene, told the Daily Nation newspaper: “I am disgusted at the appalling rescue efforts of the military and police. There is no coordination at all”.

That was evident in the early hours of Saturday morning as dozens of people scrambled over the rubble, calling for torches, hacksaws and rope from a clearly ill-equipped rescue force.

By mid-morning, however, it was clear who was in charge.

Americans carrying side-arms and wearing body armour had taken a grip and British army engineers were directing their Kenyan colleagues on how best to use bulldozers and earthmoving equipment brought in to help the work.

With planeloads of U.S. experts due in the Kenyan capital later on Saturday, few observers doubt the Kenyan government won’t take advantage of their experience and let them direct the rest of the operation.

(C) Reuters Limited 1998.

East African blasts probe swings into gear.

By David Fox

NAIROBI, Aug 8 (Reuters) – U.S. President Bill Clinton vowed on Saturday to do everything it takes to catch the culprits of two devastating car bombs aimed at Washington’s missions in East Africa that left at least 141 people dead and thousands injured.

As a huge U.S. investigation and international rescue mission swung into gear in Kenya and Tanzania, Clinton said in a weekly radio address that the United States would never bow to terrorism.

“No matter how long it takes or where it takes us we will pursue terrorists until the cases are solved and justice is done,” Clinton said.

“…we will continue to take the fight to terrorists.”

Clinton spoke as dozens of U.S. medical assistants and forensic experts continued to arrive in the region to help the East African nations cope with the tragedy.

They were joined by experts from South Africa, Israel, France, Britain and Germany. Offers of help came from India, Japan and scores of other countries as the operation took on the appearance of a grand military alliance.

Israeli experts took over a desperate scramble for survivors thought to be trapped beneath the rubble of a building next to the U.S. embassy in Nairobi that was flattened in Friday’s blast.

They plucked a survivor from the rubble late on Saturday evening, nearly 36 hours after the bomb brought the building crashing down around him.

Another man died on the verge of being rescued, having survived more than 24 hours pinned beneath tonnes of concrete and debris.

Although the official death toll from the Kenya blast stands at 132, rescue workers fear between 20 and 30 more lie crushed beneath the collapsed Ufundi House. The number of injured stands at 4,149.

In neighbouring Tanzania, the death toll rose to nine as three people died during the day of injuries from the car bomb that went off outside the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam. More than 70 people were wounded in the blast.

Prudence Bushnell, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya who was slightly injured in the blast, said the United States had no idea who was responsible.

“As to theories…I have none. Do you?” she asked a news conference.

Eleven U.S. citizens were killed in the Kenya blast but none died in Dar es Salaam.

“Terrorism has been brought to our doorsteps,” Kenyan Foreign Minister Bonaya Godana told a news conference.

The blasts occurred minutes apart at around 0735 GMT on Friday, the first one rocking the Kenyan capital and sending a dense plume of smoke into the air.

Glass and rubble rained down on pedestrians walking through the central business district as the explosion punched out the windows of office blocks up to five blocks away.

Of the more than 4,000 injured, dozens are still in critical condition in Nairobi’s hospitals, but officials say medical staff have responded like heroes.

“I was very proud to be Kenyan,” Trade Minister Joseph Kamotho, who was injured in the blast, told Reuters from his hospital bed.

But in the city’s main morgue, corpses lay side by side or piled on top of each other across the entire length of the floor. Many were limbless or bent into unnatural angles. The innards of others hung from bellies ripped open in the explosion.

In single-file, a grim procession of relatives passed slowly through the narrow building. An eerie hush filled the room, broken only by the sound of shuffling feet and the occasional muffled cry as a body was recognised.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the blasts as “indiscriminate terrorism”, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth sent a message of support and tributes poured in from African capitals.

A previously unknown Islamic group on Saturday claimed responsibility for the twin bombings and vowed more attacks to drive American and Western troops from Moslem countries.

A series of statements sent on Saturday to a television station broadcasting to the Gulf said the Nairobi bombing was carried out by two Islamic fundamentalist dissidents originally from the holy city of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, while an Egyptian staged the Dar es Salaam attack. It did not mention the men’s fate.

The senders called themselves “The Islamic Army for the Liberation of Holy Places”.

Similar statements were sent to Radio France International and a London-based Arabic newspaper but there was no indication that the senders could provide evidence for their claims.

The messages called for the release from prison of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric serving a life sentence in the United States for plotting bombings in New York, and several others who appeared to be fundamentalist preachers in Saudi Arabia.

It was not immediately known whether U.S. investigators would give credence to the claim.

(C) Reuters Limited 1998.

Kenya buries its dead as blast probe widens.

By David Fox

NAIROBI, Aug 9 (Reuters) – Kenya began the grim task of burying its dead on Sunday as officials announced the first breaks in the investigation of deadly bomb attacks on two U.S. embassies in East Africa.

To the cries of “God is Great”, the almost headless body of Farhat Sheikh was slowly lowered into a freshly-dug grave at Nairobi’s main Moslem cemetry on Sunday.

The bitter irony that a Moslem fundamentalist group had claimed responsibility for the attacks was not lost on his family.

“He was a true Moslem and yet they killed him,” Sheikh’s brother-in-law, Zahir Khan said. “They have achieved nothing in their objective.”

Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi told reporters that investigators were following “a few leads” in connection with the Nairobi blast, but in Tanzania a U.S. official said a security camera mounted atop the embassy building may have captured the bombers in the act.

The latest death toll in Kenya now stands at 174 – including 11 Americans – according to a government committee set up to deal with the crisis, but rescue workers digging through the ruins of a building flattened by the blast fear dozens more bodies may still lie in the rubble.

They were concentrating their efforts, however, on searching for survivors – although hopes were dwindling nearly 60 hours after the bombs went off.

The head of the Israeli rescue force in Kenya told reporters that a woman they had been trying to pluck from the rubble of the building had stopped speaking, and they feared she had died.

In Tanzania, investigators were focusing on a blue water-delivery tanker which drew near to the embassy gates just before the blast.

“We are not sure if it was a car bomb or if it was a (water) truck bomb,” a diplomat told reporters in a briefing.

There was a crater outside the embassy perimeter on the street which appeared to be the centre of the explosion, and the tanker had been blasted right up to the embassy wall.

Both the driver and assistant of the tanker were killed in the explosion, the diplomat said.

On Sunday a grey mist covered the Kenyan capital like a shroud and church bells pealed across the country in tribute to the dead.

The Supreme Council of Kenya Moslems – who make up around 10 percent of Kenya’s approximately 30 million population – called the blast “a heinous act of terrorism”.

A previously unknown Islamic group on Saturday claimed responsibility for the twin bombings and vowed more attacks to drive American and Western troops from Moslem countries.

It said the Nairobi bombing was carried out by two men from Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, while an Egyptian staged the Dar es Salaam attack. It did not mention the men’s fate.

The group called itself “The Islamic Army for the Liberation of Holy Places”.

U.S. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger told American television it was far too soon to publicly identify possible suspects but added: “We take all of that seriously.”

As the international rescue operation continued, U.S. President Bill Clinton vowed to do everything possible to catch the culprits.

Clinton spoke as dozens of U.S. medical assistants and forensic experts continued to arrive in the region to help the East African nations cope with the tragedy.

They were joined by experts from South Africa, Israel, France, Britain and Germany. Offers of help came from India, Japan and scores of other countries as the operation took on the appearance of a grand military alliance.

Prudence Bushnell, the U.S. Ambassador to Kenya who was slightly injured in the blast, said the United States had no idea who was responsible.

“As to theories…I have none. Do you?” she asked a news conference.

The blasts occurred minutes apart at around 0735 GMT on Friday, the first one rocking the Kenyan capital and sending a dense plume of smoke into the air.

Glass and rubble rained down on pedestrians walking through the central business district as the explosion punched out the windows of office blocks as far as five blocks away.

Order appeared to have returned to Kenya’s hospitals in the chaotic aftermath of the blast, which left nearly 5,000 injured.

Doctors said they had now discharged scores of people and taken many off the critical list.

U.S. medical teams also evacuated 10 Americans and five Kenyans working in the embassy to Germany, U.S. embassy spokesman Bill Barr said.

Hundreds of people still jostled for space around noticeboards in hospitals to see where their relatives were admitted, whether they had been discharged – or had died.

(C) Reuters Limited 1998.

Document lba0000020021113du8902r8k

Witnesses give conflicting accounts of Kenya blast.

By David Fox

NAIROBI, Aug 10 (Reuters) – Investigators probing the deadly car bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Kenya will have to sift through thousands of varying eyewitness accounts before getting to the truth.

Three days after blast – which killed up to 200 people and injured over 5,000 others – it seems almost as many versions of the attack exists as there are survivors.

People can be excused for the confusion.

From the Reuters office just six blocks from the embassy, staff heard a massive explosion coming from the central business district and saw a dark cloud mushrooming above the skyline.

Reporters, photographers and cameramen were quickly at the site and reported scenes of complete pandemonium.

The blast punched out windows from office blocks as far as five blocks away, showering thousands of city workers and pedestrians with a deadly spray of glass.

As the injured fled in panic – some leaving a trail of blood behind them – thousands of spectators rushed to the scene to volunteer help or merely gawk at the spectacle.

Everyone claimed to have seen something significant, but their versions were as tangled as the ruins of Ufundi House, the office block next to the embassy that was flattened by the blast.

The U.S. embassy is a six-storey building of reinforced concrete and, supposedly, bomb-proof windows, although every one was blown out by the blast.

In the heart of the city, it has has no grounds as such, but is surrounded by a thick reinforced steel fence and a gate, around 15 metres (yards) from the building itself. U.S. marines regularly patrol the space between the fence and the mission and also man the gate.

Outside the fence, at the rear of the embassy and behind Ufundi House, was a car park used by embassy staff and visitors to the U.S. mission.

This area was guarded by “askaris”, Kiswahili for the local, unarmed and sometimes untrained Kenyan security guards who are a permanent feature of this crime-ridden city.

What is clear is that the blast originated from a car parked in the embassy car park.

Some witnesses claim to have seen a man sitting in pick-up truck as it exploded. It is scarcely possible they could have lived to tell the tale as virtually ever other vehicle in the park spontaneously burst into flames and rubble from Ufundi house came crashing down.

Others claim to have seen a vehicle explode as it crashed through the pole barrier at the entrance to the car park. Anyone this close would have to be be very lucky to be alive.

Local newspapers have quoted other witnesses as saying three “Arab-looking men” leapt out of a vehicle, lobbed a grenade at the embassy proper and engaged marines in a firefight before the blast.

Some witnesses say one of the men was arrested immediately after the blast, and newspapers carried photographs of an “Arab-looking man” – almost a cliche in the aftermath of terror attacks around the world – being led away by police.

Kenya is home to a significant population of Indians and Pakistanis as well as tens of thousands of Somalis, Sudanese and Ethiopians.

Many of them are Moslems; Friday is Islam’s holy day of prayer and the city’s main mosque is also in the centre of town – in short, any of them might be described as “Arab-looking”.

Scores of U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation specialists have been flown in to probe the blast, but they have kept quiet so far on what they may have found.

One thing is clear however – they may have to dig deeper that the rubble of Ufundi House to uncover the truth.

(C) Reuters Limited 1998.

Arrests made in embassy bombing, US offers reward.

By David Fox

NAIROBI, Aug 10 (Reuters) – The first arrests in the bomb attacks on two U.S. embassies in East Africa were made on Monday as rescue workers frantically searched for survivors from last Friday’s devastating blasts.

Investigators in Dar es Salaam said they had arrested possible suspects for the attack in Tanzania which occurred within minutes of a more powerful blast in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

Police Commissioner Wilson Mwansasu confirmed “some arrests” but he could not say how many or whether those being held were considered prime suspects.

In Washington, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan Rice said she had heard from Tanzanian authorities that three groups of suspects had been arrested.

Mwansasu said senior officers were meeting on the case. Further details were not immediately available.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright announced a reward of up to $2 million for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for the bombings.

By Monday afternoon, the death toll from the twin blasts had risen to 202, all but 10 in Nairobi, but a faint tapping sound gave Nairobi rescue workers hope that a woman was still alive beneath the rubble.

U.S. President Bill Clinton, who has vowed to hunt down those responsible for the bombs no matter how long it took, cut short a trip to the U.S. West Coast on Wednesday to discuss the bombings with his foreign policy advisers.

The flag-draped coffins containing the bodies of 11 of the 12 Americans killed in the Nairobi bombing – none was killed in Dar es Salaam – left Kenya aboard a U.S. Air Force plane. The family of one of the American victims, who had married a Kenyan, chose to bury her in Kenya.

Albright, who was to fly to Ramstein U.S. Air Force Base in Frankfurt, Germany, to escort the bodies home, told State Department employees in Washington she and Clinton were preparing a budget request to rebuild the shattered embassy building and tighten security at other U.S. missions.

Dressed in black, Albright vowed that the United States “will not be intimidated” by the explosions.

“Although terror can turn buildings to rubble and laughter to tears, it can never, will never, deter America from its purpose or presence around the globe,” she said.

In Nairobi, rescue workers continued the delicate task of sifting through tonnes of concrete and debris to try to reach possible survivors of the attack on the U.S. mission there, described by a British army engineer as “the biggest bomb I have ever seen”.

The sound of tapping from the rubble of a Nairobi office block earlier on Monday gave fatigued rescue workers renewed hope there was at least one more survivor but hours later they had still not reached the source of the sound.

Rescuers have been working around the clock to reach a woman, known only as “Rose”, from the collapsed structure of Ufundi House, next door to the U.S. mission.

“I am full of hope she is alive and is hanging in there,” said Meital Hallawi, a first officer in the Israeli army rescue unit leading the operation. “Rose is very strong.”

The British army engineer, who arrived at the scene with a contingent of men about an hour after the blast, told Reuters the bomb could have contained as much as 250 kg (550 lb) of explosive.

Jones told Reuters that any number of commercial explosives could have been used to construct the bomb, including ammonium phosphate and plastic explosives.

“I reckon it was a pretty well-made bomb. I don’t think it was manufactured locally,” he said. “I am only surmising but I would imagine it was manufactured somewhere else and shipped in.”

Despite news of the arrests in Tanzania, investigators warned it could take time to identify the perpetrators of the attacks, which struck the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam minutes apart on Friday morning.

In Washington, national security officials warned that the probe could be a long one but said the United States would never rest until the attackers were brought to justice.

Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi told reporters on Sunday that investigators were following “a few leads” in connection with the Nairobi blast.

A previously unknown Islamic group calling itself “The Islamic Army for the Liberation of Holy Places” on Saturday claimed responsibility for the bombings and vowed more attacks to drive American and Western troops from Moslem countries.

It said the Nairobi bombing was carried out by two men from Mecca in Saudi Arabia, while an Egyptian staged the Dar es Salaam attack. It did not mention the fate of the men.

U.S. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger told American television on Sunday it was far too soon to publicly identify possible suspects but added: “We take all of that seriously”.

In Tanzania, a U.S. official said a security camera mounted atop the bombed embassy may have captured the bombers in the act. He gave no details about what the tape might show.

Dozens of U.S. medical assistants and forensic experts have arrived in the region to help the two East African nations cope with the tragedy. They have been joined by experts from South Africa, Israel, France, Britain and Germany.

(C) Reuters Limited 1998.

U.S. struggles to shake bias accusations after bomb.

By David Fox

NAIROBI, Aug 12 (Reuters) – The United States is struggling to shake off accusations that it was concerned mainly with its own citizens after the deadly attack on its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

An editorial in the Kenya Times, owned by the ruling Kenya African National Union party, criticised U.S. Marines for being more concerned with American than Kenyan lives after the bomb went off.

“The question will remain for a long time to come whether the abstract notion that the U.S. embassy is American territory is an excuse to behave as the U.S. Marines did,” the editorial said.

At least 244 people were killed – including 12 Americans – by a huge car bomb aimed at the U.S. embassy in Kenya’s capital last Friday. A simultaneous attack on the U.S. mission in neighbouring Tanzania killed 10 people, none of them Americans.

The Nairobi blast extensively damaged the embassy building but almost levelled Ufundi House next door, home to a number of small businesses as well as a secretarial college.

Most of the dead were in Ufundi House when the bomb went off, but the 12 Americans and 21 Kenyan members of staff died in the embassy itself.

As scores of volunteers rushed to help rescue people trapped in the rubble, gun-toting Marines kept them away from the embassy.

“We were so close to a woman but we just couldn’t reach her,” volunteer rescuer Jackson Muthomi told Reuters on Friday as he worked on Ufundi House.

“I asked the Americans for a drill but they said they would have to authorise it and in the end it was too late.”

His story has been echoed by scores of volunteer workers in local newspapers since the blast.

The privately owned East African Standard also criticised the United States in an editorial headed: “The ugly side of Americans”.

“Like it or not, there is discontent among ordinary people and their perception of the American attitude towards the local population and this tragedy,” it said.

A cartoon in the Daily Nation, East Africa’s biggest-circulation daily, showed a white man being carried from rubble to a plane marked “Airforce Rescue One”. In the foreground is a Kenyan with his leg blown off being told by burly Marines: “We can’t take you for some security reasons.”

U.S. officials have tried to defend themselves from the charges, but the whispering campaign continues.

Many Kenyans are deeply unhappy that immediately after the blast, Washington issued a travel advisory urging Americans not to visit Kenya.

U.S. officials have vehemently denied one story concerning the three-day delay by embassy officials in finding the 12th American victim.

According to the story, 10 of the victims were white and another of Asian extraction and their bodies were swiftly taken to a private morgue in the city.

But the 12th victim was black and U.S. officials did not notice his body being dumped with those of dozens of local Kenyans in the overcrowded government mortuary.

U.S. officials have embarked on a campaign to improve their image.

The embassy, now located at the Kenya headquarters of USAID, Washington’s external aid agency, has issued a two-page statement which painstakingly details every aspect of U.S. assistance to the operation so far.

“American search-and-rescue teams have not only worked at the U.S. Embassy, but also continue to assist in ongoing search efforts at the other buildings damaged or destroyed,” the statement said.

The embassy evacuated all seriously wounded Americans for medical treatment abroad, as well as 12 Kenyan embassy staff.

But the image remains, and the Standard editorial also took issue with the high-level armed U.S. presence currently on Kenyan soil.

“Compare today’s heavy-handed, some would say insensitive, presence of U.S. Marines ringing the embassy – some looking more suited to a Rambo movie than the bread-and-butter role of a guard in a city centre – with the lax situation of just one week ago,” it said.

“Razor wire may be necessary (although that’s debatable), but is there any need for all the canvas sheeting, complete with Stars and Stripes and flags of the various units?…”

In stark contrast, the Israeli army rescue team which worked around the clock from Saturday morning to try pull survivors from Ufundi House have been greeted as heroes.

“They have identified with our suffering fully and we are grateful,” Edmond Wafula told the Standard. “They are a wonderful lot.”

(C) Reuters Limited 1998.

Kenya holds suspects, criticism of U.S. mounts.

By David Fox

NAIROBI, Aug 12 (Reuters) – Kenyan police made a number of arrests on Wednesday in connection with the deadly car bomb attack on the U.S. embassy as criticism of American priorities in the aftermath of the blast mounted.

“A number of persons have been detained in relation to this incident and are providing useful leads into the circumstances surrounding the bomb blast,” President Daniel arap Moi said in a statement which gave no details of the arrests.

But its phrasing suggested Moi was starting to take note of a growing wave of resentment among Kenyans angered at perceived U.S. discrimination immediately after the blast.

“The government is grateful that many Kenyans, especially members of the public, have provided and continue to provide useful information to the various branches of the Kenya police who are in charge of these investigations,” the statement said.

The words “Kenyans” and “Kenya police” were capitalised.

At least 247 people – including 12 Americans – were killed in the Nairobi blast, while a simultaneous attack on the U.S. mission in Tanzania killed 10 people, none of them Americans.

The Nairobi bomb extensively damaged the embassy but almost levelled the neighbouring Ufundi House – home to a number of small businesses and a secretarial college.

As volunteers rushed to help people trapped in the rubble, gun-toting Marines kept them away from the embassy.

Local newspapers said the bodies of 10 white Americans and a citizen of Asian extraction were taken to a private morgue, while those of Kenyan staff were dumped in the city mortuary.

The body of the 12th American, who was black, was recovered from the pile of Kenyan corpses three days later, they said.

Kenya Times, owned by Moi’s Kenya African National Union party, wrote: “The question will remain for a long time to come whether the abstract notion that the U.S. embassy is American territory is an excuse to behave as the U.S. Marines did.”

An East African Standard editorial – “The ugly side of Americans” – said: “Like it or not, there is discontent among ordinary people and their perception of the American attitude towards the local population and this tragedy.”

U.S. Ambassador Prudence Bushnell denied the accusations in an interview with commerical KTN television on Wednesday night.

“Our house was on fire…our children were in danger,” she said. “We were rescuing people. People are people. There was no determination of race.”

Health Management Solutions, a private Kenyan medical aid organisation, claimed U.S. officials pressured the South African air force to forgo airlifting emergency supplies to Nairobi to free up the plane to evacuate the embassy’s wounded.

“The American government must stand accused not just of an open act of discrimination, but also of deliberately sabotaging humanitarian efforts in order to protect itself and its own,” the organisation said in a statement.

A multinational rescue team wrapped up its operation on Wednesday after abandoning hope of pulling any more survivors from Ufundi House.

The last glimmer evaporated when the Israeli-led team recovered the body of Rose Wanjiku, whom rescuers had heard tapping from beneath the rubble on Monday.

“This morning we finished the mission,” said Colonel Udi Ben Uri of the Israeli army. “We pulled out 95 bodies (since rescue efforts began). We found three people trapped alive.”

At a ceremony to mark the end of the operation, a large gathering of Kenyan, French, Israeli and U.S. rescue workers and officials held a minute’s silence in remembrance of the victims.

An Israeli official read a speech which ended with the Hebrew saying “He who saves one soul saves the entire world”.

The focus was shifting to the investigators who must sift through the blast site, eyewitness accounts and endless rumours in their hunt for clues to the identity of the bombers.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has scheduled a news conference for Thursday to brief reporters on its inquiry. FBI officers had been unable to get full access to the site until the rescue operation wrapped up.

Tanzanian police arrested 14 foreigners – six Iraqis, six Sudanese, a Somali and a Turk – in their search for those responsible but said on Tuesday that none had been charged.

Police released the Somali, who holds an Australian passport, on Wednesday after checks showed he worked for the United Nations refugee agency and was en route from Sudan to a new posting in western Tanzania.

A previously unknown group calling itself The Islamic Army for the Liberation of Holy Places has claimed responsibility, but there has been no evidence to support the claim.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrived in Germany on Wednesday to accompany the bodies of 10 of the 12 American dead to the United States.

Albright vowed that Washington would continue to play a leading role in internatonal affairs despite the bombings.

“We will not be intimidated or pushed off the world stage by people who do not like what we stand for,” Albright told reporters after visiting U.S. embassy staff wounded in the Nairobi bombing who were being treated at a U.S military hospital in Germany.

The body of Senior Master Sergeant Sherry Lynn Olds left Ramstein Air Base in southwest Germany on Wednesday morning at the request of her family. The other American victim is being buried in Kenya.

U.S. President Bill Clinton will speak at a ceremony on Thursday at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington to mark the return of the bodies.

(C) Reuters Limited 1998.

Daniel arap Moi at a political rally

Kenya ruling party adopts razzmatazz over rhetoric.

By David Fox

NAIROBI, Nov 7 (Reuters) – As a microcosm of the society it helped shape, the ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU) party’s rally on Friday accurately reflected the state of the nation.

It started late, the power failed and the water was cut off, but there was plenty of enthusiasm and a make-do spirit familiar to this east African country.

There was also an air of steely power among the leaders as the party which has led Kenya since independence in 1963 gathered the faithful to launch its election manifesto.

Around 4,000 delegates from around the country and representing all levels of society met at a gymnasium in the Moi International Sports Centre on the outskirts of Nairobi to plot what is likely to be another election victory when a poll date is finally set.

Businessmen in designer suits arrived in chauffeur-driven Mercedes, a group of Moslem clerics in tattered robes arrived by private bus and hundreds of others splashed through a drenching rainstorm to arrive on foot.

They were all united in purpose — to cheer the party elders and pay tribute to their leader, President Daniel arap Moi.

“We love Kenya. We love KANU. We love our leader Moi,” sang a choir of women singers dressed in the green, red and black colours of the party.

In the stands, a man wearing a T-shirt bedecked with a rooster, the party emblem, cock-a-doodle-dooed to cheers from the crowd.

When Moi finally arrived, nearly two hours later than expected, women ululated, men whistled and everyone stamped their feet in approval.

Earlier a brief power cut plunged the hall into darkness, while a plumbing failure meant water had to be carried by buckets to makeshift kitchens catering for the hungry and thirsty.

The sports complex, which Moi opened just 10 years ago, is already scarred by the neglect that characterises much of Kenyan infrastructure.

Broken panes of glass have not been repaired, tiles are missing from the floor and the roof leaks in parts.

But it failed to dampen the enthusiasm of the crowd, many of whom were hoping to be selected as parliamentary candidates in the forthcoming elections.

“I very much want to be an MP,” said one elderly delegate wearing a fez and richly hennaed beard. “I very much want a car.”

Moi gave no clue as to when elections would be held, but analysts noted that as Friday’s rally was billed “Manifesto 1997″, an election by the end of the year — in line with the constitution — seemed probable.

C'est Moi

The rally still contained some of the rhetoric that for years has dominated the particular brand of African nationalist-type socialism that sprung up over much of the continent as countries gained independence from colonial rule.

But it also contained a degree of glitzy razzmatazz, with balloons, bunting, ribbons, placards and posters being waved around.

The release of a giant gift-wrapped box of helium-filled balloons drew the biggest cheer of the day, but that soon turned to laughter as most failed to rise more than a few metres (feet) from the ground.

Moi good-naturedly batted them about with the ceremonial ivory swagger stick he often carries in public. When one burst the crowd took their cue and began a frenzy of balloon popping.

With not a hint of dissent in the house, Moi left to a standing ovation. “We will win the election,” he said as he left. “Go and win the election.”

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

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Rural Kisii portrays complex Kenya politics.

By David Fox

KISII, Kenya, Dec 5 (Reuters) – The Kenyan political landscape since independence in 1963 has been painted in the colours of the ruling Kenya African National Union and dominated by two men: the nation’s founder Jomo Kenyatta and his successor Daniel arap Moi.

But at a local level the picture is one of abstract complexity featuring a web of party intrigues, tribal loyalties, loose ethnic alliances and patronage that begin at village level and reach all the way to State House.

A good vantage point to view this is Kisii, a small hilly town in Nyanza province, western Kenya, where all the ingredients come together to form an often explosive cocktail.

That mix is being shaken once again as the nation prepares to go to the polls on December 29.

Kisii, a town of about 200,000 people, is in Kisii district and takes its name from the pastoral tribe that inhabits the area.

Kisii

In the south of the same province live the Maasai, a traditional herder people, and in the north the prosperous Luo who have benefited from the provincial capital Kisumu’s regional importance as a trading hub on Lake Victoria.

Nyanza has not been a particularly happy hunting ground for Moi, but in rural Kisii district at least his party has retained a relatively loyal following.

That may now be changing.

“KANU has many, many problems,” said Christopher Obure, the KANU member of parliament for Bobasi in Kisii until last month when parliament was dissolved ahead of the election.

“There are problems of succession, problems of credibility…problems at the very top of the party,” he said.

Obure, who describes himself as a die-hard KANU supporter, was speaking to Reuters after a night of campaigning in his home district — campaigning merely for the right to stand for the party in the elections.

He won the party’s nomination by 10,000 votes last week, but the result was overturned following an appeal by his opponents and Obure had to repeat the process on Friday.

KANU won six of the ten Kisii seats up for grabs in the 1992 election — the first multi-party poll in modern Kenya — but Moi gleaned less than 15 percent of the area’s presidential vote and many think he will do even worse this time around.

“People are warning me against even suggesting they vote for Moi,” Obure said. “He can virtually count himself out here.”

Under Kenya’s election rules, a candidate must win 25 percent of the vote in at least five of eight provinces to become president.

If this does not happen, the top two candidates must face off again — a scenario that would leave Moi facing, for once, a single opponent with more chance of uniting opposition.

Moi was crushed in Nyanza in 1992.

The province gave the late Oginga Odinga 74 percent of the vote compared to Moi’s 14.5 percent.

This time around, however, the non-Moi vote is expected to be more evenly divided. Many people in Kisii believe this will give Moi the opportunity to somehow garner 25 percent of the province’s vote.

Communities such as the Kisii, Luo and Maasai — for years living relatively amicably along uncharted tribal boundaries — have been clashing more frequently, polarising areas into groups that pledge allegiance to whoever promises them security.

Police say Maasai tribesmen murdered 14 Kisii villagers last month in the most brutal attack of a series in which more than 50 people have been killed in the past three months.

Luo villagers speak of armed gangs of Kisii youths rampaging through rural areas at night.

The disruptions mean whole communities may miss the chance to vote because they have not had the opportunity to register, are dislocated or merely fear violence and intimidation on December 29.

Opposition sources say a smaller turnout in Nyanza means a much larger slice of the vote for the better-organised KANU — something that could help keep Moi from facing a difficult second round of voting.

“If the president has to face a run off it will be doom,” Obure said. “I don’t think he can win in a two-person race.”

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

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Kisumu ... choked with weed.

Provincial capital choked by weed and political apathy.

By David Fox

KISUMU, Kenya, Nov 7 (Reuters) – A weed known as water hyacinth seems to be the only growth industry these days in Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest town situated on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria.

The weed — whose pretty flowers belie the damage its clogging roots do to transport, fishing and industry in the area — spreads as far as the eye can see, in a vast green and purple carpet.

The town itself seems to have stopped moving because of the choking hyacinth. A peeling arch across the main street praises President Daniel arap Moi — who has been in power since 1978 — for his “10 years of progress and leadership”.

The twin towers of the provincial headquarters form a ghostly silhouette in the evening sunset. Although the structure was built in 1988, it was never finished or connected to utilities and bats are the only residents.

With a general election scheduled across Kenya on December 29, residents feel Kisumu would be the perfect place for aspiring politicians to beat the drum about what can and should be done to boost development. Residents say, however, they have been noticeable only by their absence.

“I must say we are a little surprised and disappointed that not a single presidential candidate has asked our views about this part of the country,” said Sunil Shah, regional head of the Kenya Association of Manufacturers.

“No-one has asked us what must be done to make the area more productive, more viable … to boost development, jobs, welfare.”

For years after Kenyan independence in 1963 Kisumu enjoyed the kind of growth envied by much of the rest of the country. Its port proved a vital lake trading hub to Uganda and Tanzania, serving as a ready outlet for its vast agricultural hinterland.

But poor planning, regional political differences and domestic politics seem to have stopped further development in its tracks.

Giant Nile perch were introduced to Lake Victoria in the 60s, with the well-intentioned aim of providing richer fishing for the communities that live along its shores.

When the voracious perch began eating their way through the lake food chain, the water hyacinth appeared in the 70s, and at first provided better breeding cover for the smaller species.

Now the weed has won the battle, incapacitating the waterworks that supply the area, stopping boats from entering or leaving the harbour and de-oxygenating the water and thus suffocating the fish.

A debate has been raging for years between environmentalists and residents over whether to use herbicide or mechanical means to kill the weed.

Herbicides have potentially dangerous consequences for the rest of the ecosystem while the resources needed to properly harvest the weed — which multiplies at an astonishing rate when its floating bulbs are crushed or broken — are simply beyond the means of this cash-strapped East African country.

Today residents of Nyanza province also feel caught between two camps.

The Luo people have for years felt isolated by Moi and the ruling Kenya African National Union party for the dissent shown by the late Oginga Odinga, a former vice-president who split from KANU in 1966 and stood against Moi in the 1992 presidential elections.

The Luo marked their displeasure at the ballot box in 1992 — also Kenya’s first multi-party elections — by voting overwhelmingly for their tribesman Odinga and his FORD-Kenya party, and it is hard to find anyone in the area who will not vote for his son Raila this time around.

“But unless the Luo suddenly decide to vote for KANU, or KANU somehow is beaten in the (national) elections — Nyanza will be ignored by Nairobi,” said one businessman.

“And Raila (Odinga) has the Luo vote sewn up. So it is unneccessary for him to go making promises.”

This picture of tribal, ethnic and party difference is being played out across Kenya as the elections near, but in Kisumu many residents say they are interested only in their own affairs.

“Why can’t we have a leader who will do something about this?” said a waiter at a local hotel’s rather inappropriately named Lakeview Terrace as he gestured towards the water hyacinth.

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

Nairobi-Mombasa road open; Kenya counts losses.

By David Fox

KAMBU BRIDGE, Kenya, Jan 18 (Reuters) – Kenya’s vital link road between the capital Nairobi and the port city of Mombasa was open on Sunday but heavy rains have created one of the biggest traffic jams East Africa has ever seen.

“We are moving…but you might not notice,” the chief engineer in charge of Kenya’s road system told Reuters at the bridge over the Kambu river, about 250 km (155 miles) from Nairobi on the way to Mombasa.

Part of Kambu bridge was washed away in fierce storms which lashed Kenya on Thursday and Friday, but there was still enough of the structure remaining on Sunday for vehicles to make a precarious crossing.

Whoops

However, transport had come to a complete standstill at Kyulu, about 60 km (37 miles) further east and a traffic jam stretched for some 25 km (16 miles) along the main highway which passes through Kenya’s Tsavo National Park.

The traffic jam was caused by a combination of terrible roads and worse driving. But after being stuck deep in the maze for the past two days, drivers appeared finally to be working together to sort out the impasse.

“Most of these problems was caused because everybody tried to go by himself,” said a policeman at the scene. “If people drive with more cooperation, we could fix this.”

But most were afraid. Drivers with their assistants, known as spanner boys, were jostling each other to try to get the traffic moving.

Hundreds of trucks, many carrying perishable goods, to or from Mombasa, have been stuck for days — their cargo slowly rotting.

The Mombasa-Nairobi road is one of the busiest in Africa, with thousands of trucks and lorries carrying goods from the port city to the east African heartland and beyond.

Trucks from Zambia, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda were bogged down in the mud with their exhausted drivers slumped at the wheel.

One Kenyan official at the scene said it would take months to repair the damage.

“We will do it but it will be a big struggle,” he said. “I think a low estimate is that it will take two billion shillings ($33.3 million) to get the road back to normal.”

The rains, blamed by Kenya’s meteorological department officials on the El Nino weather phenomenon, have virtually washed away what remained of the tarmac for huge stretches.

Dozens of newly imported vehicles still bearing Arabic license plates from Dubai, a growing trading base for the region, were stuck in the mud on their first taste of Kenya’s roads.

The Sunday Nation newspaper quoted Public Works Minister Kipkalya Kones as saying the government would use the army and National Youth Service to help with temporary repairs.

Bus operators between Nairobi and Mombasa said they had suspended bookings until further notice. Rail transport was still available but bookings there were reported low.

Floods have closed the main transit route for road and rail goods traffic to Uganda and Rwanda via the Malaba border in western Kenya. Road traffic for Uganda was being diverted to the Busia border crossing or to the Lake Victoria port of Kisumu for ferry transfer to Ugandan ports.

Kenya Airways reported that bookings to and from Mombasa and other coastal resorts had “sky-rocketed”.

On Saturday, Kenya’s Meteorological Department said rainfall would decrease in flood-hit areas over the next few days, partly as a result of a tropical cyclone in the Mozambique Channel off Africa’s Indian Ocean coast.

Kenya police said on Saturday that at least 86 people had been killed by the floods and the Sunday Standard put the toll at 91.

There were conflicting police reports over the period during which the deaths had occurred. Police said on Saturday that the toll was for a 24-hour period but senior police officers said separately that the toll could be for a three-month period.

On Sunday, police spokesmen would not say when the first death from floods was actually recorded.

(c) Reuters Limited 1998

Anger, despair on Kenya’s highway from hell.

By David Fox

VOI, Kenya, Jan 19 (Reuters) – In the 23 years Ali Ahmed Abdi has been a truck driver in East Africa he has been shot at, robbed, blown up by a landmine and been in more crashes than he can remember.

None of that compared to driving from the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa to the capital Nairobi this week, the wizened Somali told Reuters in the middle of a logjam of hundreds of vehicles stranded on a muddy stretch of highway.

“This is the road from hell,” he said on Sunday as he prepared to spend a third night in the cab of his Mercedes truck. “This is just crazy…I think it is time to retire.”

Ali Ahmed, along with over 300 truck, bus and car drivers and hundreds more passengers, have been stuck in the middle of what has become possibly East Africa’s biggest ever traffic jam.

A combination of terrible roads, worse driving and torrential rains blamed on the El Nino weather phenomenon, brought traffic to a standstill on the Mombasa-Nairobi road, a 500-km (310-mile) highway that is a vital economic artery across East Africa and parts of Central Africa.

Three people, including a woman who gave birth amid the highway chaos, died on Monday, witnesses said.

Police said on Saturday a total of 86 people had died nationwide as a direct result of rain and flooding while health workers say more than 400 people have died from epidemics linked to the unseasonal weather.

Nowhere is the neglect of Kenya’s infrastructure more evident than on this road.

The rutted, potholed, two-lane road cuts its way from the Indian Ocean through beautiful African bush as it winds slowly uphill to Nairobi on the lip of the great Rift Valley.

A few years ago, on a good day, the journey could be done in six hours. On Sunday it took a Reuters team 14 hours to make it just halfway.

To the shock of those stranded in the middle of nowhere with lions on the prowl in the nearby bush, the Kenyan government appeared unconcerned.

A dozen or so labourers were trying without evident success to repair the Kamba bridge which had been reduced to a precarious three-metre(10 foot)-wide structure.

There was no sign of any other attempt by the government to fix or even temporarily solve a problem that virtually everyone in the traffic jam dubbed “a national disgrace”.

“When I get to Nairobi — if I get to Nairobi — I will get a picture of (President Daniel arap) Moi and stick it on the front of my truck for the return journey,” said Omar Adi Rahman, a Mombasa-based driver. “He promised us progress and development — what a big joke.”

Youths from a bus carrying party activists from the ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU) tried to stop a Reuters cameraman from filming the mess, saying: “Don’t report negative things…we are not monkeys.”

But they vanished when furious truck drivers insisted on helping reporters through the impasse so they “could tell the world about this”, as one said.

Their anger was directed fully at Moi, who won a further five-year term in last month’s chaotic election, and KANU, which retained a slim majority in parliament.

“Why doesn’t the president come and see this?” said another driver. “And I don’t mean come in a helicopter, I mean he should drive from his big house to Mombasa like the wananchi (common people).”

The jam was worst on a 20-km (12-mile) stretch of the road that splits Kenya’s world-famous Tsavo national park. Drivers were reluctant to leave the road even to relieve themselves for fear of lions which could be heard roaring as the sun set.

The consequences of a collapsed infrastructure could be seen from the luxury Voi Safari Lodge where the 50-room hotel carved out of a granite “kopjie”, or hill, lay empty save for a honeymooning Italian couple who arrived a week ago.

“We were expecting a big tour group from Israel yesterday (Saturday), but they didn’t make it on the road ahead and I don’t think they will make it today (Sunday),” said the hotel manager. “Nobody wants to come to Kenya anymore.”

The manager of Amboseli Safari Lodge, stuck with two American clients in the jam, said Kenya’s infrastructure and tourism in particular was on the verge of disintegration.

“How can I in good faith tell visitors they should drive for two days to make just 200 km (125 miles),” he said. “We can’t fly because the airstrips are wet…we can’t drive because the roads have collapsed.”

Many drivers, hungry and thirsty after days on the road, began raiding cargo trucks for food. An Indian trader carrying tomatoes to the coast began giving out packets of the fruit saying: “It is rotting. I may as well give it away.”

Doug Shepherd, an American tourist from Ohio, stood shaking his head and asked the crowd: “Why doesn’t the army come and fix these roads? It would take the U.S. army a couple of hours.”

The laughter that greeted his query — from hundreds of tired, frustrated Kenyan, Rwandan, Burundian, Ugandan and Somali drivers — said more than any response.

(c) Reuters Limited 1998

Floods cause chaos on key road link in Kenya.

By David Fox

KYULU, Kenya, Jan 19 (Reuters) – At least three people died and a baby was born on Monday in a logjam of hundreds of vehicles stranded on Kenya’s flooded Nairobi-Mombasa highway, witnesses said.

Weather experts who blame the unseasonal downpours on the El Nino phenomenon have predicted more rain this week, with the possibility of further havoc on the road that links much of East and Central Africa to the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa.

Witnesses said a bus driver, a passenger and the woman who gave birth all died in the traffic jam which began on Thursday.

“I saw the three dead with my own eyes,” a witness told Reuters at Kyulu, a desolate patch of the highway near the town of Voi.

The witnesses said the woman died during labour. One of the two men suffered a heart attack and the other apparently died from exhaustion.

Police at the scene declined to comment on the reported deaths.

Apart from Kenya, countries depending on Mombasa for imports and exports include Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Central African Republic.

Despite a reopening of the road on Sunday, there was no sign of a clearing of the build up of hundreds of trucks, buses and private cars stretching for more than 16 km (10 miles).

Downpours in what is normally the dry season have battered Kenya since late last year, submerging vast stretches of roads and washing away bridges.

State radio said on Monday the death toll from flooding nationwide had risen from a total of 86 announced by police on Saturday to 94, including five drownings in Nairobi and two other towns. Health workers say more than 400 people have died from epidemics linked to the unseasonal weather.

“Traffic is still building up. It will take a lot of effort to clear the logjam, and that is if it doesn’t rain again,” one official at Kyulu said.

“People are good humoured, resigned to their fate. I don’t know how long it will remain that way,” a witness said.

A Kenya Ports Authority spokesman said port activity had not so far been affected by closure or delays on the road, but added: “If it continues, no doubt the port will be affected.”

He said long-term storage facilities in Mombasa enabled importers to keep their shipments at port for some time. Exports usually arrive at port well in advance of shipment.

Industry leaders meanwhile urged the government to take special measures to repair the roads in the country for which tourism is the top foreign exchange earner.

“Urgent and immediate steps must be taken to rehabilitate our roads,” the chairman of the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce, Kassim Owango, told Reuters.

He called for a private sector authority to manage the roads.

“El Nino has given us the chance to start with a clean slate,” he added.

The European Commission office in Nairobi hinted on Monday the European Union should be able to go ahead with a 84 million Ecu ($91 million) road development project in Kenya this year.

The Commission’s development adviser in Nairobi, John Simpson, said the EU last year “decided to postpone a decision…for technical and operational reasons”.

“In the meantime, the government has agreed to a number of measures to enhance the efficiency and sustainability of the project,” Simpson told Reuters. “We expect a decision would be taken in the second quarter of this year.”

Kenya Television Network (KTN) said schools around the northeastern town of Garissa were closed due to flooding. Residents were running short of food because delivery trucks were to unable to reach the town, it said.

KTN also showed footage from western Kenya’s Kano plains, where it said floods had forced hundreds of peasants to flee their grass-thatched houses and take refuge in schools and churches.

(c) Reuters Limited 1998

FOCUS-Kenya hunts for killers of British tourist.

By David Fox

NAIROBI, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Kenyan authorities on Monday launched a hunt for the killers of a British tourist who was stabbed and robbed while on holiday at a luxury safari camp.

Roy Chivers was knifed in the chest on Sunday as he was walking with his wife Sandra in a private game sanctuary attached to the Aberdare Country Club, about 225 km (140 miles) north of the capital Nairobi.

Kenyan Tourism Minister Henry Kosgey took the unusual step of holding a news conference on the murder and gave his “personal assurance” that the culprits would be caught.

“We are taking this unusual attack very seriously,” Kosgey said. “A team with tracker dogs is combing the area and making enquiries…we are confident we will resolve the matter.”

Officials at the Aberdare Country Club, one of the most luxurious hotels in the country, said that Chivers and his wife were on their first visit to Kenya and the Aberdare stay was part of a two-week trip.

Kosgey said the couple, from Orpington in Kent, were on an early morning game walk on Sunday when they were ambushed by two men, one of whom drew a knife and demanded they hand over their video camera.

“Mr Chivers tried to fight them and he was stabbed in the chest,” Kosgey said. “His wife was also struggling to stop the attack and she was cut on the hand.”

Hotel staff said other guests riding on horses through the park raised the alarm after they found Sandra Chivers cradling her husband in her arms in the bush.

The couple were taken to a local hospital for emergency treatment while a flying ambulance was summoned to nearby Mweiga airstrip.

“Unfortunately, on admittance to Nairobi hospital, Mr Chivers suffered cardiac arrest and despite the efforts of the medical team he died,” Kosgey said. “Our heartfelt sympathy goes to Mrs Chivers and her family.”

Sandra Chivers was being comforted by British High Commission officials while arrangements were being made to fly her husband’s body home, officials said.

The Tourism Ministry has offered a reward of 50,000 shillings ($800) for information leading to the capture and conviction of the killers.

Police said the robbers fled with two cameras worth around 80,000 shillings. One of the cameras was later found near the scene.

The Aberdare Country Club, owned by the Lonrho Group, is a 49-room lodge built 27 years ago around a white-settler’s ranch and boasts a golf course and private 1,300-acre game sanctuary.

The park is entirely fenced and police officials speculated that the killers must have cut through the wire to gain access.

Kosgey said attacks on tourists in game parks were so rare that officials did not even have statistics.

“This is very much an isolated incident,” Kosgey said, “but we do appreciate the effect such an incident might have on the industry.”

Kenyan tourism is already reeling under a combination of natural and man-made calamities, including ethnic violence on the coast in July, floods caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon, uncertainty over last December’s elections and violence in the Rift Valley last month.

The number of visitors to the East African country dropped to 600,000 last year from a peak of more than 850,000 in 1994.

(c) Reuters Limited 1998

Biaro refugee camp, near Kisangani

Aid officials in Zaire hope for access to refugees.

By David Fox

KISANGANI, Zaire, April 27 (Reuter) – Zairean rebel soldiers on Sunday again blocked aid workers and journalists from going to areas where thousands of Rwandan refugees are believed to have fled, aid officials said.

The officials were hoping for talks with rebel leader Laurent Kabila to try to break the deadlock over access.

The rebels barred travelling further than seven km (four miles) south of Kisangani in northeastern Zaire towards makeshift camps hurriedly abandoned by more than 50,000 Rwandan Hutu refugees last week.

The fate of those who fled after attacks by local villagers and rebel soldiers remained uncertain.

“We have very little hard information,” said Paul Stromberg, spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.

He said aid officials were hoping for a series of meetings with Kabila, who arrived in Kisangani on Saturday night, to convince him of the need to get help to the refugees quickly.

“Even if we find them, the first question we have for Mr Kabila is what kind of assistance can we give them?” he said.

Planes flying over the dense forests south of Kisangani have failed to find any sign of the refugees, although about 50 were ferried north across the Zaire River by villagers in dugout canoes on Saturday.

Stromberg said about 100 others had been sighted at Ubundu, some 125 km (80 miles) south of Kisangani, but he doubted they would have been part of any group that fled last week’s fighting.

Aldo Ajello

The European Union’s special Great Lakes envoy, Aldo Ajello, arrived in Kisangani on Saturday with a high-level delegation from the EU’s “troika”, the group’s past, current and future presidencies.

The U.N.’s regional coordinator, Pierce Gerety, was also in town hoping to meet Kabila.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has described rebel treatment of the refugees as “slow extermination” and a U.N. food agency spokeswoman, making a comparison with Hitler’s Germany, has said: “The expression ‘Final Solution’ is not exaggerated.”

Some of the refugees played a prominent role in the 1994 slaughter of an estimated 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda, and Kabila told Reuters last week that criminals among them had transported their lawlessness to Zaire.

Refugees among those who crossed the river on Saturday could not give a clear picture of what happened to cause their camps to be so swiftly abandoned.

One man, clutching a Bible as he sat in the prow of a canoe, said soldiers had surrounded the camp on Tuesday but local Zaireans armed with machetes and axes had led a series of raids which sparked the exodus.

“There was a lot of shooting, but I didn’t see where from or where at,” he said. “We just ran away as fast as we could.”

The 50,000-plus refugees at Kasese, about 35 km (22 miles) south of Kisangani, were among the last of more than a million Hutus who fled Rwanda in 1994 to escape reprisal for the genocide.

Most returned in a huge wave of repatriation sparked by Kabila’s sweeping rebel advance through eastern Zaire. But this group instead headed west and marched nearly 500 kms (300 miles) through dense jungle before being overwhelmed by hunger, exhaustion and illness just south of Kisangani.

It was there that the rebel army overtook them.

An outbreak of cholera was cited by rebels as the reason for delaying the start of a planned U.N. airlift of the refugees.

Rebel authorities have blamed local hostility to the refugees on envy sparked by the sight of tons of food and other aid being given to them by aid organisations.

Local Zaireans have looted U.N. warehouses and a train carrying supplies to the camps, but some of them said they had been urged on by rebel soldiers.

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

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Rwandan Hutu refugees near Kisangani

Aid workers search for missing refugees in Zaire.

By David Fox

KISANGANI, Zaire, April 28 (Reuter) – Aid workers searched on Monday for up to 100,000 Rwandan refugees missing in Zaire’s jungle and said it was virtually impossible to meet a rebel demand to repatriate all Rwandan refugees within 60 days.

In another setback, the U.N. Children’s Fund said men in military uniforms had seized 50 ailing Rwandan Hutu refugee children from a hospital in rebel-held east Zaire on Saturday.

“We have sent people south across the Zaire River and we’ve sent a flight to Ubundu to verify whether any more refugees have gone that far south,” said U.N. refugee agency UNHCR spokesman Paul Stromberg in the northeast Zairean capital of Kisangani.

“Repatriating all the refugees in 60 days would have been difficult enough but now we have to search for them first,” he said. “We will be asking the (rebel) alliance for flexibility.”

Aldo Ajello, the European Union’s special envoy to Central Africa’s “Great Lakes” region, led the team driving south of Kisangani with Filippo Grandi, UNHCR’s regional coordinator.

Stromberg said U.N. agencies would ask for more days if they met hurdles in finding and returning the refugees who fled last week, but said they could use two airports in Kisangani for direct repatriation flights to Rwanda’s capital Kigali.

In addition to the 100,000 missing since last week, 250,000 Rwandan and Burundian refugees are unaccounted for in Zaire since they fled at the start of civil war in October.

Rebel leader Laurent Kabila agreed to give agencies access to search for refugees in talks with aid officials on Sunday but asked for all Rwandan refugees to be sent home within 60 days.

In Geneva, UNICEF said 50 children and several adult Rwandan Hutu refugees at a hospital in Lwiro, 30 km (19 miles) north of the eastern border city of Bukavu, were driven off on trucks on Saturday after men in uniform beat up three medical workers.

“About 20 men in military uniforms drove up in trucks on Saturday morning and fired in the air to warn people not to leave their homes,” said UNICEF spokeswoman Francesca Toso.

“They then stormed into the pediatric hospital, where the children were being treated for serious malnutrition, took them out and put them on trucks, together with some adult refugees, and drove off, warning they might come back,” she added.

Stromberg said U.N. agency officials on Sunday demanded an inquiry into rebel treatment of the refugees because of the “many allegations, many distressing reports”.

Kabila flew to the city of Goma from Kisangani on Monday and said he would meet U.S. envoy Bill Richardson on Wednesday as part of attempts to broker a peaceful end to the civil war.

Kabila said he would meet Richardson, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and President Bill Clinton’s envoy, in Lubumbashi after the U.S. diplomat saw President Mobutu Sese Seko in Kinshasa on Tuesday.

He said the rebels were gaining ground at the same time as he cooperated with U.S. and South African diplomatic mediation.

“We are committed to dialogue but that doesn’t stop us from making military gains,” Kabila told Reuters on arrival from Kisangani for talks with commanders of the rebel Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL).

He said rebels had reached the area around Bondo, a town 300 km (185 miles) east of Gbadolite, where Mobutu has his northern jungle palace, and were consolidating their approach to the town of Kikwit, 390 km (240 miles) east of Zaire’s capital Kinshasa.

He said the final touches were being put to a pact mediated by South Africa and both sides had almost agreed on a venue for face-to-face talks but some details had to be worked out.

The rebel chief says he will meet Mobutu only to discuss how he will stand down as Zaire’s leader after 32 years in power.

Kabila has denied that rebel forces sparked the refugee exodus last week by attacking the camps south of Kisangani and has said he wanted an apology from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has described the fate of the refugees as “slow extermination”.

About 50 refugees who reached Kisangani on Saturday said their camp was surrounded on Tuesday by rebel soldiers and then attacked by Zairean villagers armed with axes and machetes.

The Hutu refugees fled Rwanda in 1994 and are collectively accused by minority Tutsis of genocide in Rwanda the same year.

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

Aid workers in Zaire find thousands of refugees.

By David Fox

KISANGANI, Zaire, April 28 (Reuter) – Aid workers said they found thousands of Rwandan refugees south of the Zairean city of Kisangani on Monday, the largest numbers seen since they fled into the jungle last week.

But aid workers said it was virtually impossible to meet a rebel demand to repatriate all Rwandan refugees within 60 days.

In another setback, the U.N. Children’s Fund UNICEF said men in military uniforms had seized 50 ailing Rwandan Hutu refugee children from a hospital in rebel-held east Zaire on Saturday.

The horror, the horror

“The team which went out today radioed back they have found thousands of refugees on the road between km 30 (mile 19) and km 41 (mile 25), heading southwards,” said U.N. World Food Programme spokeswoman Michele Quintaglie in Nairobi.

“It seems we are talking about 6,000 or 7,000 people but more are emerging from the forest. This is very good news. We are planning to send down a train loaded with 115 tonnes of food today,” she said.

Aldo Ajello, the European Union’s special envoy to Central Africa’s “Great Lakes” region, led the team driving south of Kisangani with Filippo Grandi of the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

“Repatriating all the refugees in 60 days would have been difficult enough but now we have to search for them first,” said UNHCR spokesman Paul Stromberg in Kisangani earlier.

“We will be asking the (rebel) alliance for flexibility.”

In addition to the 100,000 missing since last week, 250,000 Rwandan and 50,000 Burundian refugees remain unaccounted for in Zaire since they fled at the start of civil war in October.

Rebel leader Laurent Kabila agreed to give agencies access to search for refugees in talks with aid officials on Sunday but asked for all Rwandan refugees to be sent home within 60 days.

In Geneva, UNICEF said 50 children and several adult Rwandan Hutu refugees at a hospital in Lwiro, 30 km (19 miles) north of the eastern border city of Bukavu, were driven off on trucks on Saturday after men in uniform beat up three medical workers.

“About 20 men in military uniforms drove up in trucks on Saturday morning and fired in the air to warn people not to leave their homes,” said UNICEF spokeswoman Francesca Toso.

“They then stormed into the pediatric hospital, where the children were being treated for serious malnutrition, took them out and put them on trucks, together with some adult refugees, and drove off, warning they might come back,” she added.

Kabila flew to the city of Goma from Kisangani on Monday and said he would meet U.S. envoy Bill Richardson on Wednesday as part of attempts to broker a peaceful end to the civil war.

He planned to see Richardson, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and President Bill Clinton’s envoy, in Lubumbashi after the envoy saw President Mobutu Sese Seko in Kinshasa on Tuesday.

“We are committed to dialogue but that doesn’t stop us from making military gains,” Kabila told Reuters on arrival from Kisangani for talks with commanders of the rebel Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL).

He said rebels had reached the area around Bondo, a town 300 km (185 miles) east of Gbadolite, where Mobutu has his northern jungle palace, and were consolidating their approach to the town of Kikwit, 390 km (240 miles) east of Zaire’s capital Kinshasa.

He said both sides had almost agreed on a venue for face-to-face talks but some details had to be worked out.

The rebel chief says he will meet Mobutu only to discuss how he will stand down as Zaire’s leader after 32 years in power.

Kabila has denied that rebel forces sparked the refugee exodus last week by attacking camps south of Kisangani and has said he wanted an apology from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who called the refugees’ fate “slow extermination”.

The Hutu refugees fled Rwanda in 1994 and are collectively accused by minority Tutsis of genocide in Rwanda the same year.

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

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Dozens dead as refugees begin return to Zaire camp.

By David Fox

BIARO, Zaire, April 28 (Reuter) – Thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees returned to a camp south of the Zairean city Kisangani on Monday, telling of a horrific slaughter that prompted their exodus last week.

Dozens of corpses of those too sick to flee fighting between Hutu refugees, local Zaireans and rebel soldiers lay festering in Biaro camp, 45 km (25 miles) south of Kisangani.

Aid officials and journalists allowed by rebel authorities to visit Biaro camp for the first time in over a week saw the bodies of many refugees who had clearly been hacked to death.

Others among the more than 5,000 refugees who emerged from the forest on Monday spoke of hundreds of dead scattered through the dense undergrowth. Aid officials said dozens more refugees appeared on the verge of death from either illness or injury.

The condition of the refugees clearly shocked aid workers finally allowed access to the area by rebels after Zairean rebel leader Laurent Kabila on Sunday demanded the U.N. repatriate all the remaining Rwandan Hutu refugees in Zaire within 60 days.

But Kabila’s promise to allow aid organisations free access to areas where the refugees are believed to have fled fell flat at the first hurdle as an aid convoy was not allowed past Biaro.

“I am very disappointed we cannot go further,” said Aldo Ajello, the European Union’s special envoy to the Great Lakes region who was on the convoy. “We have been promised full access but it seems not to be the case.”

The refugees said they abandoned Biaro after being attacked by villagers aided by rebel soldiers. They said they repulsed an attack by villagers on April 21 but fled when a huge force returned the following day.

“We just ran, it was terrible,” said one man who emerged trembling from the forest as the aid convoy arrived. “There was shooting and people were being attacked with knives and machetes. It was total panic.”

Rebel authorities have denied any role in the attacks and suggest they were initiated by local Zaireans envious of the free food and medical aid given to the refugees by aid agencies.

But tonnes of food lay scattered around Biaro and nothing appeared to have been looted. Most food seemed to have been destroyed by fires which aid officials said looked as if they had been deliberately set.

Giant rubber bladders used to store drinking water had been slashed open and hoses cut.

Aid workers said it was virtually impossible to meet the rebel demand to repatriate all Rwandan refugees within 60 days.

In addition to up to 100,000 Rwandan refugees missing in the jungle south of Kisangani since last week, 250,000 Rwandan and 50,000 Burundian refugees remain unaccounted for in Zaire since they fled camps at the start of civil war in October.

In Geneva, UNICEF said 50 children and several adult Rwandan Hutu refugees at a hospital in Lwiro, 30 km (19 miles) north of the eastern border city of Bukavu, were driven off on trucks on Saturday after men in uniform beat up three medical workers.

“About 20 men in military uniforms drove up in trucks on Saturday morning and fired in the air to warn people not to leave their homes,” said UNICEF spokeswoman Francesca Toso.

“They then stormed into the pediatric hospital, where the children were being treated for serious malnutrition, took them out and put them on trucks, together with some adult refugees, and drove off, warning they might come back,” she added.

Blankets, pots, clothes and other personal belongings lay scattered throughout Biaro camp on Monday and most refugees trickling back had little else other than what they wore.

One youth wept as he told how he had been separated from his family. He said he had eaten nothing for over a week and gorged himself on biscuits on Monday given him by aid workers.

Filippo Grandi, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR regional coordinator, said he despaired at the work needed to be done to nurse the refugees back to health and repatriate them.

“We were all ready to go two weeks ago. Now we have to start from scratch,” he said.

The U.N. had hoped to start airlifting all the refugees from Biaro and Kasese camps this month but the plan was delayed by a cholera outbreak rebels said could spread to local Zaireans.

The Hutu refugees fled Rwanda in 1994 and are collectively accused by minority Tutsis of genocide in Rwanda the same year.

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

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Rwandan Hutu refugees meet horror in east Zaire.

By David Fox

BIARO CAMP, Zaire, April 29 (Reuter) – The middle-aged Rwandan Hutu refugee was waiting to die in Zaire.

Cared for by his wife and 14-year-old son — the only survivors of his 11-strong immediate family — Mbajo Njirabakaranye sat under a tree in Biaro while scores of flies swarmed on his festering wounds.

His skull had been cracked open by a machete. Maggots could be seen on a bloodied stump that was once his elbow. He rocked back and forth, moaning deliriously to himself.

“Can you help my husband?” his wife asked journalists who were allowed to visit the camp for the first time on Monday since last week when they were barred by Zairean rebels.

“I think he is waiting to die,” she said.

Njirabakaranye was one of some 85,000 Hutu refugees who fled makeshift camps at Biaro and Kasese last Tuesday after they said they were attacked by local villagers backed by Zairean rebels.

His wife said rebels swarmed through their camp in dense forest 41 km (25 miles) south of Kisangani and fired wildly while local Zaireans ran amok with machetes, axes and knives.

Njirabakaranye lost his arm when he vainly attempted to stop a flailing machete, she said. They only noticed his head wound when the refugees had fled from the camp in wild panic.

Her testimony, and that of scores of other refugees who were emerging hesitantly from the forests back to the camps on Monday, undermined rebel assertions they intervened only to save the refugees.

This group was the last big body of refugees known still to be in Zaire after seven months of advances by Laurent Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire.

The Hutu refugees, fully aware of the support given the rebels by Rwanda’s government and army, chose to flee farther west to escape returning home to face reprisals for the 1994 genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates by Hutus.

Many aid workers fear they found a fate worse than a swift death.

After a harrowing 500 km (300 mile) trek from border areas in eastern Zaire, the refugees were overcome by hunger, illness and exhaustion south of Kisangani and overtaken by the rebels.

Resigned to their fate, they appeared to be waiting to take their chances back home in Rwanda courtesy of a United Nations airlift that was supposed to have started over three weeks ago.

The airlift never got off the ground as rebel authorities said a cholera outbreak in Biaro could spread to local people.

The fact that some of the refugees were prepared to return to the camps showed just how dire their problems were.

Biaro and Kasese had been evacuated so swiftly that they had not carried any of their pots, blankets or sheeting with them.

In the camps, dozens of fly-blown corpses lay among the trees behind what had been a hospital for cholera patients.

Medical workers said some of them had probably been overcome by cholera before the camps emptied, but many also bore horrific wounds. Two dead children lay side by side, one with an arm around the other.

Nearby, Njirabakaranye’s wife shyly unravelled a tattered sarong and brought out a red bank savings book. It showed her husband had prudently saved a small amount every month at the bank branch in Buling village from where he came in 1994. His balance, dated January that year, was 1,800 francs.

“Can you help?” she asked. “You can take this.”

($1=3,000 Rwandan francs)

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

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Plight of Rwandan refugees touches U.S. envoy.

By David Fox

KISANGANI, Zaire, April 30 (Reuter) – Like the seasoned U.S. troubleshooter he is, U.S. envoy Bill Richardson stormed into a crowd of Rwandan Hutu refugees in Zaire on Wednesday all smiles and handshakes.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations stopped in front of a young Hutu woman and gently stroked the brow of the child she was carrying.

“She’s cold,” Richardson said.

“She’s dead,” the mother said.

“I’m sorry,” Richardson said, “I’m so sorry,” and his mood appeared to sink as he continued with a flying visit to this sweltering city, Zaire’s third-largest carved out of dense jungle on a bend in the Zaire River.

Bill Richardson

“This is a dire situation…it’s a tragedy,” Richardson told reporters. “We have to do something about it. We have to be able to do something about it.”

Richardson had hoped to visit Biaro refugee camp, 41 km (25 miles) south of Kisangani, but the unexpected delivery of 450 refugees by Zairean rebel authorities tied up the only ferry that can take vehicles across the river.

Instead he mingled with those being taken to a transit camp to await a U.N. airlift that would carry them home to Rwanda after a three-year exile at the end of a seven-month nightmare.

Most of the refugees Richardson saw appeared in good health, but he said he had heard reports of dreadful conditions at Biaro and Kasese camps.

Over 100,000 refugees sheltered at those two camps fled into the forest in wild panic last week after being attacked by local villagers and Tutsi-dominated rebels.

Aid officials believe possibly hundreds of refugees died in the attacks or from illness and hunger as they hid in forest.

On Tuesday, dozens of rotting corpses littered the camps and refugees said hundreds more were scattered in the forest.

Thousands began returning to the camps on Monday, their fears overwhelmed by desperation. They were still trickling back on Wednesday, but aid workers were despairing at a lack of access to the area.

On Tuesday the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR tried to send 11 trucks loaded with supplies to the camps, but rebels — despite a promise by their leader Laurent Kabila on Sunday of “total access” for aid workers — allowed only three to travel.

On Wednesday, a second convoy was cancelled following the unexpected arrival of the refugee train in Kisangani.

In a meeting with Kisangani’s governor, Richardson told him the international community expected the rebel Alliance to loosen its grip on the areas to where refugees have fled.

“I ask you to allow access to all aid workers,” he said. “It is important, vitally important that they are allowed to go about their business in the best possible way.”

The mother Richardson spoke to at the ferry dock later climbed aboard a UNHCR truck clutching the lifeless body of her daughter.

She was to spend Wednesday night in a transit camp near Kisangani’s international airport before being carried home on an Ilyushin aircraft on Thursday, the second day of a U.N. airlift.

Rebel leader Laurent Kabila has given aid agencies 60 days from Thursday to repatriate all Rwandan refugees in Zaire.

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

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Survival of the fittest among Rwandan refugees.

By David Fox

BIARO, Zaire, May 2 (Reuter) – Gaston stands out among his fellow Rwandan Hutu refugees. He is clearly better fed and in better health than most of his compatriots.

He makes no apology for this as he stands watch over a tent sheltering his sister and dozens of other emaciated children to whom aid workers are giving rehydration fluid at this makeshift refugee camp 40 km (25 miles) south of Kisangani.

Despite more than two years in a refugee camp at Goma in eastern Zaire and then a 500 km (300 mile) trek westwards, Gaston seems to be doing very well.

“It is because I am nearly a doctor,” he says. “I was studying medicine when the war came and since then I have been helping in the camps. For this you get better treatment.”

“Better treatment” is a refugee euphemism for privileges granted by the thuggish Interahamwe militiamen and former Rwandan army soldiers who have controlled the fate of over a million Hutu refugees since 1994.

The refugees fled their homeland to escape reprisal for the genocide of over 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates.

Survival of the fittest

Most went home last November when Zairean rebels, drawing initially on ethnic Tutsis and with the support of the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan government and army, began an offensive that has brought them close to the Zairean capital Kinshasa.

The first target of the rebels last year was to break up the dozens of sprawling refugee camps in eastern Zaire, from which Hutu extremists were launching raids back into Rwanda.

The Interahamwe had a stanglehold on the camps in subtle and not so subtle ways, Gaston said, and quickly pressed into service anyone with useful skills, such as a trainee doctor.

“There was no choice…Either I worked for them and they looked after me or I didn’t work for them and they killed me and my family,” said Gaston.

How he came to be in the camps in the first place was a mixture of bad luck and worse judgment, he said.

Recuperating from malaria at home near Gitarama when the Rwanda Patriotic Front launched the offensive that ended the genocide, Gaston was determined to stay when thousands of his fellow Hutus began fleeing their homes.

“When I realised I was the only Hutu left, I decided to go as well. At university I had some Tutsi friends, at home I had some Tutsi friends, but I knew I would be blamed if I stayed.”

When rebels raided the camps and over a million Rwandans went home, Gaston says the Interahamwe forced him to flee west.

His usefulness paid off on the trek that ended south of Kisangani, when thousands died of hunger or illness. “When food was low, they (the Interahamwe) would steal from local people or take from refugees who were not so useful,” he says. “I would take what they gave me and try to share it with my family.”

The Zairean rebels overtook the column in mid-March and it was at this point, Gaston said, that even the refugee leaders decided to go no further. They quickly established makeshift camps and the U.N. aid agencies swiftly moved into gear with food, water and plans for a massive airlift back to Rwanda.

On April 21 and 22, however, the Biaro and Kasese camps were attacked by Zairean locals and rebel soldiers — apparently to retaliate for the murder of six villagers by refugees — and the camps emptied into the surrounding jungle.

“I myself saw only six soldiers where we were, but they were definitely Rwandan, definitely Tutsis,” he said. “I heard them speaking, shouting. When we tried to fight back against the Zaireans they started shooting everywhere.”

“In the camps we hear lots of rumours but we never heard about the killing of the six. We think this is a complete lie.”

In those two days of fighting and the following week in the forest, Gaston said he saw things he will never forget.

“My father died in Goma, my two brothers died coming here. I don’t know where my other brother is. My mother is over there with my other brother and sister and this is my other sister,” he said, pointing to a naked skeletal figure on a tarpaulin.

Around him are people with dreadful wounds. One woman has been shot through the chest. When medical workers unwrap her home-made bandage, maggots tumble from the wound.

As Gaston talks, another fitter-looking refugee is tying a scrawled sign to a tree with an arrow indicating where people from Gisenye should gather. The organisers are back at work.

He shouts something at Gaston who apologises and says he has to go. “They need me do work,” he says.

A doctor from the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF told Reuters that Gaston’s sister would probably be dead by Friday afternoon.

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

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Over 100 Rwandans suffocate in Zaire refugee train.

By David Fox

KISANGANI, Zaire, May 4 (Reuter) – More than 100 Hutu refugees from Rwanda suffocated or were crushed to death on Sunday in a train carrying them from a refugee camp in Zaire to be airlifted back to their country, U.N. officials said.

“I think this is one of the most horrifying events I have ever seen in all my years as an aid worker,” said Kilian Kleinschmidt, head of the Kisangani office of the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

Aid workers and journalists saw dozens of bodies tumbling from six open wagons as the train pulled into Kisangani station in northeastern Zaire.

Those packed inside the wagons and still living leapt over the sides as the train came to a stop after a two-hour journey from Biaro camp 41 km (25 miles) away.

Hundreds were reported injured, more than 50 of them in serious condition.

Kleinschmidt called on the Zairean rebel authorities who control the area and run the railways to hand over full control of the process of repatriating Rwandan refugees.

“There has been too much death already,” he said. “Whoever is responsible for this has to let us do our job… Whoever is involved in this has to improve.”

The rebel authorities had told UNHCR officials to expect around 2,800 refugees. But it was clear that the six open-topped carriages carried hundreds more.

Survivors said thousands of refugees had swarmed onto the train as it pulled out of a station near Biaro. In the crush that followed, the weak, children and dozens of desperately ill adults were forced to the bottom of the carriages.

Those watching the arrival were unaware that under thousands of upright refugees lay the bodies of dozens who died during the journey.

Three photographers who travelled in the engine compartment had no idea the tragedy had taken place.

“Only when he got off could we see what happened,” said Stephen Ferry, an American photograher aboard the train. “At the beginning of the journey we could see some people shouting for us to stop. We told the driver but he said no problem.”

“After that the journey seemed fine… Actually we and they seemed glad to be leaving the camp.”

“Throughout the journey I could have been taking pictures of dead people … they just hadn’t fallen down,” said Kadir van Lohuizen, a Dutch photographer.

At Kisangani station, aid workers tried to help pull those still alive from the jumble of limbs and bodies at the bottom of the wagons.

One man moaned:” My wife died two months ago and now my only son has died.” Next to him was a man constantly crossing himself mumbling “My God, my God” in Swahili as he sat in the middle of a pile of dead bodies from the second wagon.

UNHCR spokesman Paul Stromberg also called on the rebel authorities to immediately allow more cooperation between aid organisations and the local administration.

“We need to have control of the trains if we are to be responsible for them,” he said.

Aid officials have complained that they have not had control over the evacuation of the refugees from the camp despite promises of cooperation from rebel leader Laurent Kabila.

Rebel officials, stung by criticism of their part in an attack on refugees at Biaro camp nearly two weeks ago, have since been loading thousands of refugees onto an old narrow-gauge railway train and dumping them at Kisangani station. The numbers arriving have overwhelmed the UNHR.

The refugees, remnants of over one million Hutus who fled Rwanda in 1994 to escape reprisal for the genocide of over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, fled west deeper into Zaire when the rebels began their offensive last year.

Bairo and nearby Kasese camp have had up to 80,000 Rwandan refugees but some are still in the forests where they fled after the attack on the camp. Thousands are now drifting back.

Over 60 refugees died overnight at Biaro, officials said, and hundreds more will die in the next few days unless medical facilities are swiftly imporved.

A further 1,132 refugees earlier flew to Rwanda’s capital Kigali on Sunday, bringing the total since the airlift began on Tuesday to 5,035.

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

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Rwandan Hutus killed on refugee train.

By David Fox

KISANGANI, Zaire, May 5 (Reuter) – Photographers thought the Rwandan Hutus were waving and cheering as they left by train from their stinking, disease-ridden refugee camp in eastern Zaire.

Only later did they discover that the people they photographed could literally have been shouting for their lives.

The train which left Biaro station on Sunday promised the end of a pitiful three-year odyssey for the thousands of Rwandans who clambered aboard the rickety open carriages on the way to a United Nations airlift back home.

Just over two hours later, as it pulled into Lubunga Station in Kisangani, it emerged that they had undergone a horrific ordeal in which more than 100 of them were killed — suffocated or crushed to death.

“I think this is one of the most horryfing events I have ever seen in all my years as an aid worker,” said Kilian Kleinschmidt, head of the Kisangani operation of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, who was at the station.

Dozens of bodies tumbled from the carriages as their sides were let down to allow the refugees to get off and make their way to a ferry across the river.

“At the begining of the journey we could see some people shouting for us to stop. We told the driver, but he said no problem,” said Stephen Ferry, a U.S. photograher who was in the train’s engine compartment.

“After that the journey seemed fine…Actually we and they seemed glad to be leaving the camp.”

UNHCR officals told Reuters earlier that they had no control over who travelled on the rebel-operated railway that had been carrying refugees into Kisangani for the past five days.

Paul Stromberg, a UNHCR spokesman, said U.N. trucks were carrying desperate cases out of the camps by truck. The fittest were making their own way to the railway station.

U.N. officials had complained for days that rebel authorities, stung by allegations that they had attacked the camps two weeks ago and forced refugees to flee, were dumping refugees in Kisangani by the unannounced trainload.

Thousands of refugees were still drifting back to Biaro and the nearby Kasese camp on Sunday although dozens of people were dying there every day from illness, hunger or wounds.

The refugees, remnants of over one million Hutus who fled Rwanda in 1994 to escape reprisal for the genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus, fled west deeper into Zaire when rebels launched an offensive last year.

One group of 80,000 trekked more than 500 km (300 miles) through dense forest to the region near Kisangani, Zaire’s third city, where they were overwhelmed by illness, hunger and exhaustion.

They finally seemed resigned to returning to Rwanda, but rebel authorities delayed a U.N.-planned repatriation on the grounds that a cholera outbreak could spread to local villagers.

The rebels also a lock-out on the camps but aid officials said all the refugees had fled into the jungle after two days of attacks by local Zaireans and rebel soldiers.

Aid officials say they cannot estimate how many people died in the fighting and the week following spent hiding in the forest. Refugees returning to the camps said hundreds of bodies littered the forest.

UNHCR officials said they were given three hours notice on Sunday that a train carrying 2,800 refugees would be arriving at the station. When it finally pulled in, it was clear it had been packed with hundreds more.

As survivors climbed down from the train, bodies of people who had been crushed to death fell down, piling on top of those which had already been squeezed down.

“Throughout the journey I could have been taking pictures of dead people…They just hadn’t fallen down,” said Kadir van Lohuizen, a Dutch photographer.

Aid officials who had returned by road from Biaro camp and were waiting for a river ferry helped to pull those still alive from the jumble of bodies.

One man shouted “Francine,Francine” as he scrambled through corpses looking for his wife. He found her dead beneath the crush.

Nearby a man constantly crossing himself mumbled “My God, my God” in Swahili as he sat in the middle of a pile of bodies from the second wagon.

Survivors said thousands of people had swarmed onto the train as it left a station near Biaro. The weak, children and dozens of desperately ill adults aboard were forced to the bottom of the carriage in the crush that followed.

Stromberg called on rebel authorities to allow more cooperation between aid organisations and officials. “We need to have control of the trains if we are to be responsible for them,” he said.

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

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Zairean rebels dump Rwanda refugees by truck.

By David Fox

KISANGANI, Zaire, May 5 (Reuter) – The United Nations averted an attempt to move more Rwandan refugees by train on Monday but Zairean rebels brought hundreds by truck and dumped them by the bodies of those killed in a stampede on the railway.

The refugees are from camps in the forests south of the Zairean city of Kisangani and the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR is keen to repatriate them by air to Rwanda.

Ninety-one of them were suffocated or crushed to death in packed railway wagons on Sunday during a two-hour journey to Kisangani from Biaro camp.

U.N. officials said on Monday they had to plead with the Zairean rebel authorities not to attempt immediately another evacuation of the Hutu refugees by rail.

“We were told this afternoon that the train was going to return and collect more refugees,” said Kilian Kleinschmidt, head of the UNHCR office in Kisangani.

“We didn’t have to lie down on the tracks but we really had to persuade them not to go at the moment,” he added.

The rebel authorities did, however, dump six trucks containing over 500 refugees at Kisangani after bringing them from Biaro, 41 kms (25 miles) south of the city.

They were dropped at the ferry jetty on the Zaire river just metres away from dozens of corpses left from Sunday.

Kleinschmidt said he had told rebel officials that it was essential for aid agencies to get more cooperation from authorities if the repatriation of tens of thousands of refugees still in Zaire was to continue without another disaster.

“We need the cooperation of the military…They are good for crowd control. But we also have to be directly involved in deciding how many people can safely be carried,” he said.

A further 2,606 refugees flew back to Rwanda on 10 flights on Monday, bringing the total since the airlift began to 7,641.

Aid officials were clearly furious that Monday’s truck convoy contained too many people crammed into too few vehicles.

The UNHCR calculates a big truck can safely carry up to 60 people but the first three trucks on Monday unloaded over 300.

Officals of the rebel Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL) were hard to find in Kisangani on Monday. One official, who identified himself as Betrand Busimo, a press officer, told Reuters that no one was available or authorised to speak to reporters.

UNHCR officials were reluctant on Monday to blame the AFDL in public for Sunday’s tragedy. Other U.N. officials, who declined to be identified, said UNHCR should share some blame, saying both were in too much of a rush to move out refugees.

“Safeguards have to be implemented now to ensure that this sort of thing doesn’t happen again,” said a U.N. official.

UNHCR spokesman Paul Stromberg told Reuters that the agency did not have anyone at Biaro station when the train was loaded.

“We have been unable to establish a permanent presence at the camp and this obviously doesn’t help,” he said.

The Rwandan Hutu refugees delivered on Monday looked shocked on seeing a pile of corpses near where they were dropped off.

Local Zaireans taunted them with bananas and young Zairean children ostentatiously gorged on fruit before the cowed group.

One Zairean woman, however, screamed at her compatriots to leave them and bought bananas and gave them to refugee children.

As she left, one Rwandan refugee woman called her an angel.

The refugees, remnants of more than a million Hutus who fled to Zaire in 1994 to escape reprisal for the genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus, fled deeper into the country when Zaire’s Tutsi-dominated rebels launched an offensive last October.

One group of 80,000 trekked more than 500 km (300 miles) through dense forest to near Kisangani, Zaire’s third city, where they were overwhelmed by illness, hunger and exhaustion.

They finally seemed resigned to returning to Rwanda, but rebel authorities delayed a U.N.-planned repatriation on the grounds a cholera outbreak could spread to local villagers.

All the refugees then fled into the jungle after two days of attacks by what they said were local Zaireans and rebels.

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

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Rwandan refugee mother abandons daughter in camp.

By David Fox

BIARO CAMP, Zaire, May 10 (Reuter) – Rwandan refugee Thesela has a bright-eyed six-year-old son who wears an old-fashioned nightdress and holds your hand while you talk to his mother.

She also had a four-year-old daughter, a shivering fever-racked skeleton wrapped in rags and strapped to her back until she abandoned her on Friday at a muddy roadside in Biaro camp.

Thesela says that she has not seen her husband since the whole family fled Biaro camp in northeastern Zaire on April 21 to escape attacks by local villagers and Zairean rebels.

She cannot find anyone she knows among the 30,000 refugees who have drifted back to Biaro since the camp attacks. The community system which helped her family through three years of exile from Rwanda is shattered, and Thesela has just given up.

Thesela dumped her daughter on the roadside a few paces away from a train she said she hoped would take her small family to Kisangani and then on a United Nations airlift back to Rwanda.

She had been refused permission by Zairean Red Cross workers to board the train because she arrived at the station too late.

She was late, she said, because she had no one to help her queue for food and water for her children, keep an eye on their meagre belongings, fend off raids by other desperate refugees and reach the station.

“My daughter is going to die,” she told Reuters after dropping her child by the roadside and walking back to the camp.

“I hope that you can help her, but there is nothing I can do anymore,” she added. “It is just me and my son now.”

While aid agencies are used to dealing with what are officially called “unaccompanied minors” in refugee camps, they have been overwhelmed in recent days by the numbers at Biaro.

“These are not unaccompanied children,” said an official of the Irish aid organisation Concern. “These children have been deliberately abandoned by their parents — some to give them a better chance, but most because they can’t cope.”

More than two million Rwandan Hutus fled their homeland in 1994 to escape reprisals for the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates. Some had blood on their hands and some were innocent.

They settled in camps in Tanzania and eastern Zaire and established a community routine mirroring their life in Rwanda.

Camps were laid out like miniature maps of Rwanda, with extended families grouped in communes and prefectures named after at home. A tightly-knit co-existence swiftly emerged.

From a young age, children were drilled into learning by rote the necessities of refugee life. Often the first words they could speak were the name of their family, village or commune.

Those always fragile family links are in ruins in Biaro.

“Most of the children in this tent have no idea who they are, let alone where they come from,” said Annick Jeantet of the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “I think they will have very little chance of finding their parents again.”

Family structures broke down as refugees fled west deeper into Zaire last year instead of returning to Rwanda with 685,000 others at the start of a revolt by Tutsi-dominated rebels.

Aid organisations take photographs of all unaccompanied children they find. These are displayed in communes in Rwanda where parents scrutinise them to see if they recognise anyone.

The chances of finding a lost child are made more difficult by the fact that parents often cannot relate a photograph of a gaunt, hollow-eyed child to their memory of their healthy child.

Thelesa’s daughter was taken by aid workers to a UNICEF tent to join hundreds of other children who were lost or abandoned.

As a drip was inserted into her arm, a photographer questioned her and took three grainy pictures. On the back of each he wrote: “Name – unknown, family – unknown, district -unknown”.

A small plastic bracelet attached to her wrist said the same thing.

“The chances of this girl surviving are slim,” said an aid worker. “The chances of her being reunited with her family are probably non-existent.”

On Saturday the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR planned to airlift nearly 300 unaccompanied children to Rwanda. It has so far sent more than 1,500 children from Biaro since April 27 home alone.

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

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Run-down zoo mirrors life in general in Kisangani.

By David Fox

KISANGANI, Zaire, May 11 (Reuter) – The last animal at Kisangani zoo was given what its keepers regard as the ultimate tribute when it died last month. They refused to eat it.

The animal, a crocodile which zookeepers said had spent at least 20 years in captivity at the Kisangani Biological Gardens, was instead dumped below the picturesque Tsope falls, where it drifted into the Zaire river from where it originally came.

“It hadn’t eaten for a long time and was sick,” said Moses Imwenza, now the only remaining keeper at the zoo. “You can’t eat a sick crocodile, so when it died we pushed it back.”

Kisangani’s zoo, set in lush, overgrown gardens on the banks of the Tsope river, is a metaphor for the faded glory this central African city once enjoyed.

Made famous in the west by Joseph Conrad’s novel “Heart of Darkness” and more recently by V.S. Naipaul’s “A bend in the River”, Kisangani is a dusty, sweltering city on the frontier of the jungle. Its sole industry seems to be petty swindling.

Imwenza told Reuters at its peak in the 1960s the zoo had dozens of animals, including lions, leopards and gorillas, and hundreds of people would visit at weekends to picnic in the gardens.

Today, the jungle is taking over the cages and enclosures and the only animals to be seen are birds flitting through trees and lizards warming themselves in dappled patches of sunlight.

Kisangani city itself seems to be in the process of being slowly swallowed up by the jungle of northeastern Zaire.

Once-elegant Belgian colonial houses lie in ruins on either side of the river that splits the city, Zaire’s third largest.

Roads have not been repaired for years and streetlights were long ago vandalised and looted for any wire they might contain.

Residents blame three decades of neglect, corruption and misrule under Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko for Kisangani’s decline, but others say the problems are more deep-rooted here.

“It is very hard to warm to Kisangani or the people,” said a missionary who has spent decades in the region. “Sometimes I wonder what purpose Kisangani has.”

In its heyday, Kisangani was the last navigable port before the Stanley Falls on the Zaire river. Its population was swelled by the arrival of white traders and Indian merchants keen to try to make a profit from the diamonds, ivory and gold in the area.

But it also developed a reputation for ruthlessness, a place where you could have your throat cut for looking at someone in the wrong way or where a whole village would be wiped out because of a rumour that its residents had found a valuable gem.

Today every other shop is still a diamond dealer, but few are open. Gaudy signs boasting “Rambo diamonds” or “Star of the east” entice small diggers, but most prefer to deal directly with Indian buyers who trade furtively from their hotel rooms.

“If you know what you are doing you can buy diamonds here for up to 40 percent less than anywhere else in the world,” one buyer said. “The problem is you have to pay so many people just to get established.”

The Indian dealers are buying up to $250,000 worth of gems per trip, taking them back to India for cutting, polishing and resale and then using the profits to air freight basic goods to Kisangani.

These are then sold at enormously inflated prices in the city’s markets to finance another spree of gem-buying. “This is Kisangani’s economy,” said another diamond dealer.

Residents welcomed Laurent Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire when they took the city on March 15 on their offensive that has taken them to near the capital Kinshasa.

But few Kisangani residents have felt any difference in their lives since then. The only industries still running are the power station above the Tsope falls and the nearby brewery.

Water costs $10 a bottle, tinned food is well past its sell-by date and aid workers and the few remaining journalists in the city are weary of a diet of stringy chicken and banana chips.

Even rabble-rousing reports on rebel radio describing either Kinshasa’s fall or imminent fall fail to motivate. “So what,” said one man listening. “Nothing will change. Kisangani will be the same.”

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

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Cynical numbers game continues over Zaire refugees.

By David Fox

KISANGANI, Zaire, May 13 (Reuter) – A new round of a cynical numbers game is under way between Rwanda and U.N. aid agencies over how many Rwandan Hutu refugees remain in Zaire.

More than 20,000 have been repatriated since April 27 in a U.N. airlift from the northeastern city of Kisangani. But questions remain over how many are left behind.

An aid mission was sent at the weekend to an area south of Kisangani which had not been visited by U.N. officials for weeks. It discovered thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees, many on the verge of death.

Thousands more refugees are arriving in Congo after walking across the breadth of Zaire, a country the size of western Europe. Some 17,000 have reached the border with Angola.

Nevertheless, the head of the Rwandan government’s refugee repatriation programme says there are only 30,000 refugees left in Zaire, in addition to some 20,000 found south of Kisangani.

This is vastly different from U.N. and other aid agency estimates of between 200,000 and 300,000 Rwandan refugees left in Zaire, most of them unaccounted for since they fled a rebellion by Tutsi-dominated rebels in the east last year.

Rwanda’s government says it wants all Hutu refugees to return and rebuild the country. So why would it say so few are left?

U.N. agencies say they want all the refugees to go back. So why would it inflate the numbers — as Rwanda alleges?

“Because one of us is lying,” a senior aid official told Reuters. “And it isn’t us.” Rwandan officials, in turn, say it is the U.N. refugee agency that is lying.

The Rwandan refugees are the rump of more than two million who fled to Zaire and Tanzania in 1994 in fear of reprisals for the genocide of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates

They included tens of thousands of former Rwandan troops and Interahamwe militiamen who led the three-month mass slaughter. In addition, there were greater numbers of their dependants.

The Rwandan government, while urging all refugees to return, says those who took part in the genocide must be punished and is pleased that the rebels, by uprooting the refugees from their camps, destroyed the bases of Hutu extremists raiding Rwanda.

Removing the threat of cross-border incursions by Hutus based in the refugee camps is one of the reasons why Rwanda says it supports the rebellion of Laurent Kabila. But it denies sending its own troops to fight alongside the Zairean rebels.

Some 685,000 Hutu refugees returned home from Zaire last year but the hard core trekked westwards deeper into Zaire.

At the time of that exodus, the Rwandan government, backed by U.S. aerial reconnaissance of the thick jungle, said most had gone home and accused UNHCR of inflating the original numbers.

In March up to 100,000 Rwandan refugees stopped south of Kisangani, overwhelmed by hunger, sickness and exhaustion. They were overtaken by the advancing rebels.

Aid workers say the rebel Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL) cannot have a tight grip on much of the territory they have seized, which amounts to three quarters of Africa’s third largest country.

They say they believe behind rebel lines are large numbers of Rwandan Hutu extremists hiding in the jungle and forests. They fear rebels are hunting them down and killing them to spare the risk, expense and trouble of repatriating them to Rwanda.

Some aid workers quote rebel commanders as saying that this is what they are doing and that they have to consider all Hutus hiding in the jungle as extremists, even women and children.

In April the rebels sealed off the area south of Kisangani, where aid agencies had located nearly 100,000 refugees.

For two weeks aid workers had no access to refugees at two main camps and the thousands more scattered in the forests.

When aid workers were finally allowed back they discovered a massacre, or series of massacres, had taken place.

Of more than 5,000 refugees treated by aid agency medical staff when they regained access to Biaro camp on July 27, nearly 30 percent had machete wounds.

Hundreds had been shot. Survivors said Zairean villagers and rebels attacked them. The rebels denied any role and said villagers attacked in revenge for the killing of six Zaireans.

Despite promises by Kabila of free access, aid workers have still been denied access to vast parts of eastern Zaire where refugees have either fled or are feared to be dead.

Officials on a train south of Kisangani at the weekend reported a smell of rotting corpses at the 52 km mark.

Rebels last week refused to give security and cooperation guarantees to allow access to eastern Zaire for a U.N. team sent to investigate allegations of massacres by rebel forces.

“We may never know how many refugees have been killed, have died or are still out there,” said a U.N. official. “At the moment all we can do is try and evacuate those we can get our hands on.”

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

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Rwanda refugee three-year odyssey ends in two days.

By David Fox

KIGALI, Rwanda, May 16 (Reuter) – There was no movie, duty-free trolley, or in-flight service of any kind on the Latvian-crewed Ilyushin plane from Kisangani, the jungle capital of northeast Zaire, to Rwanda.

But for the 265 Rwandan Hutu refugees aboard the flight, the first for most, ended three years in exile, a six-month trek to escape rebels and weeks of suffering south of Kisangani city.

Aboard the Ilysuhin, there were no seatbelts, seats or safety demonstration. Refugees merely shuffled on and squatted, facing backwards, as the aircraft’s giant engines screamed for takeoff.

The refugees on the U.N. airlift home smiled nervously as they felt the plane leave the ground. Minutes later they seemed as relaxed as a frequent-flyer chalking up air miles in business class.

“I have never been on a plane before,” said beaming Gabriel Nsamanje with seven family members gathered around him.

The plane carrying Nsamanje and his family Thursday pushed the number of refugees flown back to Rwanda since the U.N. airlift began in earnest from Kisangani April 27 to more than 25,000.

After two years in a refugee camp and a grueling six-month walk through some of the densest forests in the world, the Nsamanje family was whisked back home by train, ferry, truck and plane.

They left Biaro refugee camp, 25 miles south of Kisangani, Wednesday on a narrow-gauge train that trundled through bamboo groves before they were dumped just south of the Zaire River.

They then took a listing vehicle ferry across the river before they were loaded on to trucks which took them to a transit camp near Kisangani’s international airport and a meager supper of beans and cornmeal. They flew home the next day.

Nsamanje and family were among hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled deeper into Zaire last October to escape the Zairian rebel offensive that has now almost reached Kinshasa.

From their camp near Bukavu on the Rwanda-Zaire border, the family first walked to Walikale and then on to Tingi Tingi.

They were almost overtaken by rebels before the toughest part of their odyssey, the walk to Kisangani. Then, overcome by hunger, exhaustion and illness, nearly 100,000 Hutu refugees collapsed into makeshift camps at Biaro and nearby Kasese.

Tens of thousands more remain scattered through the forests of Zaire. Some have even made their way across the entire country, a land the size of western Europe, to reach Congo.

“I can’t say why we kept going,” Nsamanje told Reuters. “We kept looking for a way around the rebels because we had heard they would kill refugees, but we couldn’t find it.”

Asked if he was glad to be returning, Nsamanje gives what is the standard reply for a refugee on the airlift, “Very happy.”

The response is surprising, given that more than 100,000 Rwandan Hutus are held in Rwanda’s jails and lockups suspected of involvement in the 1994 genocide of an estimated 800,000 Hutus and Tutsi moderates.

As the plane gained height, a journalist explained to the refugees they should swallow to equalize the pressure change in the cabin. Laughter erupted as word was passed round and their ears “popped.”

Refugee mothers suckled their infants and wizened old men rolled banana leaves into make-do cigarettes. The crew vanished on to the flight deck and the refugees gaped at the entrails of the plane, a former passenger aircraft gutted to carry cargo.

At touchdown, refugees burst into applause and peered into the dusk as the tailgate was lowered. They saw more trucks waiting to take them to what would be their last night as refugees.

Nsamanje registered Friday with Rwandan and U.N. officials before leaving on a truck for his home town, Gisenji.

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

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