Zaire Africa

A team of federal disease detectives was dispatched to Zaire on Wednesday to investigate a deadly outbreak of what health officials strongly suspect is viral hemorrhagic fever--a devastating illness that can cause death within days by dissolving the body's organs.

Guerrillas from Laurent Kabila's rebel army marched triumphantly into this sprawling capital Saturday and quickly moved to take control of the city and the country, effectively ending a seven-month civil war in Africa's third-largest nation. A beaming Kabila told reporters at rebel headquarters in the southeastern city of Lubumbashi that he was assuming power immediately as the head of state of Zaire, which he called the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A mysterious lethal virus has broken out in Zaire, killing at least 56 people and prompting government officials to place parts of the country under quarantine, health officials said Tuesday. The most likely cause is Ebola, one of the world's deadliest viruses, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. Ebola, which causes hemorrhaging, fevers and vomiting, kills about 90% of those it infects, and there is no treatment or vaccine.

As rebel forces close in on this capital, a diplomatic deal is nearing completion to allow President Mobutu Sese Seko to retire in dignity and rebel leader Laurent Kabila to take over a transitional government without a battle, said a diplomatic source familiar with the negotiations Monday.

France and Belgium on Friday urged their citizens to flee Zaire as the political situation appeared to be disintegrating in Black Africa's largest state. European diplomats blamed President Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire's ruler for the last 26 years, for the latest crisis, which spawned rioting in the capital, Kinshasa, and the mining city of Lubumbashi.

Rwanda's ousted Hutu government has regrouped here on the Zairian border and is feebly rattling its rusty bloodstained saber. Even as more Rwandans continue to file out of their country into semi-permanent refugee camps in Zaire, their shadowy, besieged, seldom-seen president and Cabinet are meeting and aspiring to a comeback. Maybe soon. Maybe in 30 years. Who can know? "It is a good thing the population has come along with the government.

Making his first formal diplomatic foray into black Africa, South African President Frederik W. de Klerk met President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire on the banks of a volcanic lake Friday to discuss ways of patching up the faltering peace process in Angola.

Rampaging bands of looters and rioting mutineers have caused about 15,000 foreign workers to evacuate this capital city in recent weeks--flee for their lives is more like it--but Delfi Messinger, American, has chosen to stay. For her own safety and with what used to be called Yankee ingenuity, she turned her workplace into a sanctuary. She dressed her staff in hospital gowns and smeared across the entrance, in sheep's blood, "SIDA," the French equivalent of "AIDS." It worked.

Rising prices and fear of shortages are making life difficult for residents of Zaire's capital after measures to keep out the Ebola virus cut the flow of food to the city. At Gambela Market in Kinshasa's slum district of Matonge on Friday, traders said a blockade of southwestern breadbasket Bandundu province, where all 124 of Zaire's Ebola cases have been reported, was pushing up prices.

Zairian rebels appointed a new governor for the Kivu region of Zaire to signal their hold on the region, but local residents and Rwandan refugees coming out of the forest Saturday reported fresh fighting in the area. In Geneva, Western aid chiefs, donors and Rwandan government officials met to coordinate relief efforts for more than half a million Rwandan Hutu refugees who have poured back home from eastern Zaire over the past week after two years in exile.

In an ominous development threatening more than 100,000 exhausted Rwandan refugees facing starvation and disease in eastern Zaire, rebels blocked the United Nations on Friday from starting a massive airlift to carry them home. The Hutu refugees have been on the run since 1994 and are on their last legs, dying at a rate of about 60 a day, although that rate is half that reported earlier this month. Officials of the Office of the U.N.

It is a tale of two cities, but it speaks volumes about the dying days of Africa's longest-surviving dictatorship. President Mobutu Sese Seko flew home to this crumbling capital Friday from cancer treatment in Europe. But after his jet landed, security agents ordered Cabinet ministers, military commanders, an honor guard and reporters from the airport so no one could see the ailing ruler climb--or be carried--down the stairs.

Zairian rebels appointed a new governor for the Kivu region of Zaire to signal their hold on the region, but local residents and Rwandan refugees coming out of the forest Saturday reported fresh fighting in the area. In Geneva, Western aid chiefs, donors and Rwandan government officials met to coordinate relief efforts for more than half a million Rwandan Hutu refugees who have poured back home from eastern Zaire over the past week after two years in exile.

A battle Friday for control of the world's largest refugee camp appeared to mark a bitter resumption of Rwanda's genocidal war of 1994--but with the bloodletting now across the border in eastern Zaire. Mortar and antiaircraft fire roared for a second day around the vast Mugunga refugee camp, about 12 miles northwest of the Zairian border city of Goma and the last known location of more than 400,000 ethnic Hutu refugees. It wasn't clear how many remained at the squalid site.

Tens of thousands of frightened refugees were on the move again Thursday in eastern Zaire after heavy fighting exploded around the airport in Goma, a key logistic and strategic city that appears to be the major target of the widening Central African war. Roads and bridges north and south of the besieged city, the administrative and supply base for more than 1.

It is 4 o'clock on a Sunday morning, and the village is sleeping. No one knows I have returned. At daybreak, I step into the red-brick church and follow the tiny toeprints of barefoot children down the dirt aisle. As I begin to speak, I am greeted by astonished eyes. "I came back to tell you that I never forgot you and how you took care of me when I was really just a girl." Pinpricks of sunlight dart like fireflies through the crumbling brick walls. There are whispers: "Miss Elizabeth?

A battle Friday for control of the world's largest refugee camp appeared to mark a bitter resumption of Rwanda's genocidal war of 1994--but with the bloodletting now across the border in eastern Zaire. Mortar and antiaircraft fire roared for a second day around the vast Mugunga refugee camp, about 12 miles northwest of the Zairian border city of Goma and the last known location of more than 400,000 ethnic Hutu refugees. It wasn't clear how many remained at the squalid site.

Tens of thousands of frightened refugees were on the move again Thursday in eastern Zaire after heavy fighting exploded around the airport in Goma, a key logistic and strategic city that appears to be the major target of the widening Central African war. Roads and bridges north and south of the besieged city, the administrative and supply base for more than 1.

The growing conflict and humanitarian crisis in eastern Zaire appeared to be spiraling out of control Saturday, threatening to engulf the volatile Great Lakes region of Central Africa in a new nightmare of ethnic bloodshed and anarchy.

Rising prices and fear of shortages are making life difficult for residents of Zaire's capital after measures to keep out the Ebola virus cut the flow of food to the city. At Gambela Market in Kinshasa's slum district of Matonge on Friday, traders said a blockade of southwestern breadbasket Bandundu province, where all 124 of Zaire's Ebola cases have been reported, was pushing up prices.