MORE than 60,000 Rwandan Hutu refugees ended 2 1/2 years of exile in Tanzania yesterday, trudging home in a human tide which started at the weekend.
More than 200 children were separated from their parents in the crush and a UN official feared the total could reach 1,000 by the end of the day.
Mothers were given pieces of yellow string by the Red Cross so they could tie themselves to their children in the lines snaking towards Rwanda.
"By noon (9 a.m. Irish time), it was close to 50,000. Now it is more than 60,000 across and before the day is over we expect it will be realistic to see 100,000," said Ms Judith Melby, a spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at Ngara.
It was by far the largest number to cross in one day since hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled their camps and trekked away from Rwanda were turned around by Tanzanian troops and began flowing across Rwanda's border on Saturday.
UNHCR said 90,000 Rwandan refugees had returned to Rwanda from Tanzania this month - most over the past three days.
Many refugees slept overnight on the road from the camps in Tanzania, as they did on Saturday night, but the border crossing at Rusomo bridge remained open for thousands who kept walking.
Ms Melby said troops yesterday moved into Karagwe camp, the northernmost of Tanzania's 11 Rwandan camps, and refugees from there would arrive at the border by the end of the week.
Trucks, buses and vans were ready inside Rwanda to pick up footsore refugees, whose will to stay out of Rwanda gave way with a brief flurry of blows from stick-wielding Tanzanian troops.
Tanzania on December 5th ordered all 540,000 Rwandan Hutu refugees out by the end of the month and troops intervened when many surged out of their camps last week and headed away from the Rwandan border.
The refugees left Rwanda in 1994 during the genocide by Hutu mobs and militiamen of about 800,000 Tutsis. They say they fear reprisals from Tutsis if they return home.
A column of refugees estimated by UNHCR at 200,000 yesterday stretched for 90 km inside Tanzania.
Ms Anne Willem Bijleveld of UNHCR said soldiers used force to break the grip of intimidators opposed to the mass return.
"In order to break the grip of the leaders. . . some sort of force must be used," she said. "We've never been able to deal with the grip of intimidators. This was the main problem from day one."
Asked why UNHCR would not protest to Tanzania, she said: "We feel the situation in Rwanda is conducive to return and that the people so far have been totally misled by their leaders."
"What we witnessed is the military and police trying to do it [repatriation] in a most peaceful manner," Ms Bijleveld added.
UNCHR has been criticised by Amnesty International for its stance over the Rwandan refugees in Tanzania, which Amnesty says is at odds with the UN agency's commitment to protect refugees from forced expulsion.
Matthew Bigg reports from Goma:
Zairean rebels yesterday appealed to government troops to switch sides and join their forces, renewing a propaganda war designed to weaken army morale ahead of President Mobutu Sese Seko's return home.
The appeal was issued in two documents signed by two lieutenant-colonels in the Zairean army who have apparently switched sides and joined the rebels.
Zairean rebels control much of north and south Kivu.
President Mobutu plans to return today after six weeks convalescing on the French Riviera from cancer surgery, one of his sons said.