THE CATHOLIC archbishop of Bukavu killed in an ambush in the troubled eastern Zaire town had written to the United Nations accusing Rwanda and Uganda of waging war in Zaire, a news agency reported yesterday.
Mgr Christophe Munzi Hirwa, a Jesuit, was "caught in an ambush" on Tuesday and his body was found in the early hours of yesterday, a church spokesman in Kinshasa said.
Writing to the UN mission in Bukavu, Mgr Munzi Hirwa accused Rwanda of using the Banyamulenge Tutsi rebels to seize power in Zaire, its much larger neighbour in the Great Lakes region, according to the Belgian newsagency Belga.
Mgr Munzi Hirwa said the conflict in the Kivu area of Zaire was "a war by Uganda and Rwanda against Zaire", said Belga, quoting from a copy of the letter.
He asked the United Nations to persuade the United States and other countries which he accused of supporting the Tutsi led Rwandan Patriotic Army to act "to stop this war of incalculable human damage".
Relief agencies said about half of Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province which descended into chaos this week with looting and gun battles, had been captured by the Banyamulenge.
Cross border fighting was continuing after Rwanda said it had launched a lightning attack on an area near Bukavu, the first admission that it was involved in the violence.
In Madrid, the director of the bureau of international cooperation of the Order of Jesus, as the Jesuits are formally known, said his office heard about the killing from Spanish members of the order in Bukavu.
As archbishop, Mgr Munzi Hirwa was the Vatican's chief representative in eastern Zaire.
In the Vatican, a papal spokesman said Pope John Paul II had been "greatly saddened" to learn of the death. Earlier in the day, the pontiff had "begged" the international community to help the Rwandan, Burundian and Zairean populations.
"I pray that the guns fall silent, that the hatred and ethnic conflicts cease, that we stop this shameful killing of human beings and seek the path of negotiation," he told a gathering of the faithful in St Peter's Square.
The Zairean authorities refused to confirm the archbishop's death.
Zaire has 17.32 million Roman Catholics among its 43.8 million people, according to 1992 and 1994 figures. Christianity has existed in the vast African nation since Belgian colonial days, which ended with independence in June 1960.