Refugees return from Congo

Some 269 Rwandan refugees voluntarily returned home on Thursday after an eight-year sojourn in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), state-owned Radio Rwanda reported.

The refugees, from Bunyakiri Camp in the eastern province of North Kivu in the Congo, entered Rwanda through the southern border post of Kamanyora, Cyagungu Province, the radio reported.

They are at a camp in Cyangugu where they are receiving food aid and logistic support from the government and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

"We have been providing basic needs like food and non-food items as we plan to transport them to their districts of origin," Eugenia Zorbas, of the UNHCR communications office, told IRIN.

She said that up to 60 more refugees were expected to arrive on Friday. Those who had arrived were 166 children, 79 men and 24 women.

Zorbas attributed the refugees' return to "technical and political" reasons. She said that some of them wanted to take part in the country's presidential election, set for 25 August. Others, she added, were forced to leave North Kivu by the prevailing dry season.

She said that the second rainy season should start in Rwanda between August and September, and that the number of refugees returning from DRC was subsequently likely to increase between August and October.

Rwanda, with the aid of UNHCR, has signed tripartite agreements with the governments of Malawi, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda and Zambia.

Some 2.5 million people fled Rwanda during and after the 1994 genocide in which at least 800,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus, were killed.