THERE are more than 30,000 Rwandan refugees encamped in the mud and filth of this makeshift settlement 25 miles south of Kisangani, David Orr reports from Biaro camp. Dead bodies litter the site while the sick and wounded languish in the most abject squalor. Everywhere there is the sound of children crying.
Most days at Biaro there are no more than half a dozen international aid agencies, among them Concern. A couple of doctors and a few medical assistants struggle to cope with an emergency which demands medics by the hundred.
Two weeks ago some 85,000 Rwandans were driven out of their camps by Zairean villagers wielding machetes and by rebels firing automatic weapons. No one knows how many died but the stench of rotting bodies along the muddy track to the camps attests to the carnage.
Early last week the first refugees began to emerge from their jungle hiding place. The inadequate aid presence is exacerbated by the reluctance of the rebel authorities to help. The Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of CongoZaire insists that no permanent camp structures are established in the jungle south of Kisangani. Agencies are allowed to work at Biaro for only a few hours during the day.
The country director for the Irish charity concern is Mr Dominic Mac Sorley. "The conditions at this camp are worse than anything we have ever seen," he says. "Almost every child is suffering from malnutrition. The rebel authorities are not giving us the time to treat the children in the camp. Even if these kids are evacuated now, without therapeutic feeding they will continue to die once they are back in Rwanda."
The dead are piled up behind the tents where aid workers tend the living and some who are barely alive. Only feet away from the corpses, families cook handfuls of food over smoking fires, wash babies in filthy water and build shelters against torrential rains.
After nearly three years in exile, Rwandan refugees are going back: more than a thousand are flown home every day. But scores of others are dying in the jungle from lack of food and medical attention. Before the repatriation is completed, many more will die in this remote and blighted place.