ZAIREAN rebels who abducted 52 sick Rwandan Hutu refugee children from a hospital kept them in a container van without food or water and beat some of them before releasing them five days later, UN agencies said yesterday in Geneva.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it had asked the Tutsi dominated rebels, who face mounting charges of human rights abuses against the refugees, to explain the mistreatment.
"We've raised this issue with the (rebel) authorities in Bukavu and we hope they will respond," a UNHCR spokesman, Mr Fernando del Mundo, said.
The UN children's agency, UNICEF, said the children, abducted by armed rebels from a paediatric hospital at Lwiro, some 30 km north of Bukavu in rebel held territory, were in very bad shape.
UNICEF said aid agencies had verified the identity of the children who were returned, as well as that of 10 accompanying adults. A UNICEF spokeswoman, said: "They were without food and water for all these days."
The UNHCR flew 781 Rwandan, refugees home from Kisangani yesterday, bringing the total since the airlift began on Sunday to some 2,500, a spokesman said.
Many Hutu refugees abandoned their camps south of Kisangani last week after attacks by villagers and rebels, but this week the refugees have been emerging from forests.
Mr Paul Stromberg, UNHCR spokesman in Kisangani, said two flights left Kisangani early yesterday and at least three would follow later in the day.
He said UNHCR had only 1,450 refugees left at a transit site in Kisangani awaiting repatriation, but trains would bring more from Biaro camp, 41 km south of Kisangani. About 30,000 Rwandans have returned to Biaro camp and want to go to Rwanda, he added.