NYABITARE, Rwanda -- Refugees fleeing tribal massacres that have left at least 5,000 people dead in Burundi told horror stories Wednesday of government troops entering villages and slaughtering hundreds of people at a time.
The refugees, many of them with bullet, shrapnel and bayonet wounds, said the Burundi troops ran wild in northern villages of the East African country, killing indiscriminately with hand grenades, bayonets and machine guns.
At least 5,000 people have been killed since Aug. 14 in clashes between the majority Hutu tribe and the rival Tutsi tribe, which dominates the government and the army.
At makeshift refugee camps at the Rwandan border post of Nyabitare and nearby Kirarambogo, Hutu refugees from the killing, including women and children, arrived Wednesday with bullet, shrapnel and bayonet wounds.
The refugees and aid workers at Nyabitare said bodies of victims of the massacres could regularly be seen floating down the Akanyaru River, which runs from northern Burundi a few hundred yards from the camp.
Most refugees said they crossed the hippo-infested river and surrounding swamps at night to avoid Burundi Army patrols posted to prevent refugees from crossing the border.
One of the refugees, Reverian Ndururumutsi, said soldiers killed his children and parents several days ago in a village just a few miles over the border in Burundi.
'The soldiers came into the house and said they wanted to talk,' Ndururumutsi said. 'But they killed five out of the 14 people present and then attacked all the houses with guns and hand grenades. I saw 500 people dead in that village alone.'
He pointed at a 5-year old boy he brought to safety from the village.
The child sat miserably in the rain, tears of pain in his eyes and his body covered in swollen and infected sores that a nurse said were caused by shrapnel from a hand grenade.
Another Hutu refugee, Agnes Muhimburu, 28, bore deep bayonet cuts on her back, arms and head. She said Burundi army soldiers arrived in her village and told everyone to gather in the center.
'Then they attacked with the guns. My husband and one of my sons died,' she said.
Many of the refugees at Nyabitare were so exhausted or injured, they could not cook for themselves. They slumped under whatever shelter they could find from the rain -- a heavy downpour overnight into Wednesday morning and then a steady drizzle through the day.
'We are trying to help all we can but we are overwhelmed by the numbers of refugees,' said Karangwa Frederique, regional administrator for the Rwandan government in the nearby regional capital of Butare.
Frederique said 41,000 Burundi refugees have crossed the border in the ten days since the killing began.
He said shooting was still heard day and night from Burundi and Burundi helicopters patrolled the border during the day. But he said he did not know what sparked the killings.
Refugees, who were equally vague, said they thought it began with roundups of Hutu intellectuals, leading to Hutu confrontations with the authorities, and then the army was sent in.
The Tutsi-dominated Burundi government has acknowledged that an estimated 5,000 people, mostly Hutus, died in the tribal killings but claims the army was sent in to separate warring Hutu and Tutsi tribesman and was not involved in the slaughter.
Aid workers in southern Rwanda and the refugees said Wednesday the death toll was much higher than the officially acknowledged figures.
Pope John Paul II appealed at his weekly general audience at the Vatican Wednesday for 'reconciliation and brotherhood' in Burundi and asked Catholics to pray for the dead and the refugees.
The ruling Tutsis make up about 14 percent of Burundi's population of 4.8 million, while Hutus make up about 85 percent.
The tribes have been deadly rivals for centuries. In what was probably independent Africa's largest tribal massacre, Tutsi tribesmen slaughtered more than 100,000 Hutu in 1972 after an attempted Hutu uprising in which an estimated 1,000 Tutsi were also killed.
In tiny, neighboring Rwanda, one of the most populous states per square mile in the world, a minority Hutu-dominated government holds sway over a majority group of Tutsi.
