Scores of Hutu Refugees Die in Overcrowded Train

KISANGANI, Zaire — More than 100 Hutu refugees suffocated or were crushed to death Sunday in a train carrying them from a refugee camp in Zaire to be airlifted home to Rwanda, a U.N. official said.

Aid workers and journalists saw dozens of bodies tumbling from open railroad cars as the train carrying them from Biaro, about 25 miles away, pulled into Kisangani station in northeastern Zaire.

Those packed inside still living leaped over the sides as the train came to a stop.

The head of the United Nations refugee agency’s office in Kisangani, Kilian Kleinschmidt, said he estimated that more than 100 people had died in the crush. Hundreds were injured, and more than 50 were in serious condition.

“I think this is one of the most horrifying events I have ever seen in all my years as an aid worker,” he said.

U.N. refugee agency officials had been told by Zairian rebel authorities who control the railroad to expect about 2,800 refugees. But it was clear that the six open-topped cars carried hundreds more.

Survivors said thousands of people had swarmed onto the train as it pulled out of a station near the refugee camp in Biaro. The weak, children and dozens of desperately ill adults aboard were forced to the bottom of the cars in the crush.

A Dutch photographer who traveled in the engine cab said he saw nothing during the journey that suggested a disaster was taking place. “Only when we got off could we see what happened,” he said. “Throughout the journey I could have been taking pictures of dead people. . . . They just hadn’t fallen down.”

U.N. refugee agency spokesman Paul Stromberg called on rebel authorities to immediately allow more cooperation between aid organizations and officials.

Thousands of refugees were still drifting back to Biaro and the nearby Kasese camp Sunday, nearly two weeks after their 80,000-strong population fled to escape attacks from local Zairians and rebels.

The refugees, remnants of more than 1 million Hutus who fled Rwanda in 1994 to escape reprisal for the genocide of more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, fled west deeper into Zaire last year when the rebels began the offensive that has taken them virtually to the nation’s capital, Kinshasa.