RWANDA-ZAIRE REFUGEES PAY HIGH PRICE.

Byline: James C. McKinley Jr. The New York Times

Her baby boy died in her arms as she trudged across the border from Zaire on Wednesday morning. He was not yet 2, a tiny victim of an intensifying war battering this part of Central Africa.

``He was suffering from malaria and we couldn't get medicine,'' said Lachel Ngengesere as her friends dug a shallow grave and wrapped the baby, Patrick, in a soiled yellow cloth. ``I blame the war, the war and the disorder.''

A few feet away, Tito Nankimbesha stood over the body of his 2-year-old son, Eric, who had succumbed after 10 days of marching with little food and no clean water. ``He died of thirst,'' Nankimbesha said. ``Yesterday the children were asking for water to drink, and all day there was no water and today there was no water and 10 minutes ago he died.''

The babies were buried side by side here, on a wide plain along the north shore of Lake Tanganyika, just a few miles from Uvira, Zaire, where Tutsi rebels have reportedly defeated the Zairian military.

They were among the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Hutu dislodged from refugee camps by the growing conflict, and who are now in serious danger of being caught in the cross-fire as Rwanda and Zaire edge toward a full-scale war.

The rebels are Tutsi who have lived in what is now Zaire for 200 years but have recently been harassed as ``foreigners'' by provincial Zairian authorities. Zaire, in turn, has accused the Tutsi-led government of neighboring Rwanda of aiding the insurgency.

The fighting has suddenly uprooted more than 200,000 Hutu, people who had previously fled to camps in that part of Zaire to escape ethnic conflicts in Burundi and Rwanda. About 400 of these Hutu refugees straggled across the frontier into Burundi on Wednesday morning, joining 3,800 who arrived Tuesday.

While Hutu families began to cross back into Burundi, fighting was reported to be heavy in the regional capital of Bukavu, about 60 miles to the north, where the rebels are pressing on the outskirts of the town, United Nations officials said.

With the rebels advancing from the south, the beleaguered Zairian army shelled the Rwandan town of Cyangugu, just across the border, for an hour and a half Wednesday morning, these officials said. Rwandan forces returned the fire and there were reports, impossible to verify, that Rwandan commandos had invaded Bukavu in an effort to silence Zairian guns there.

It was the second day the two countries have exchanged artillery fire across the Ruzizi River, which divides Cyangugu from Bukavu. Tuesday, Zairians fired 120-millimeter shells into Rwanda, killing a civilian and wounding eight soldiers in a barracks. Rwanda responded by firing at least 100 mortar rounds into Bukavu.

The shelling was the latest sign the two countries are moving toward open war. Zaire has accused Rwanda and Burundi, whose governments are controlled by Tutsi, of sending forces across the border to fight alongside the Tutsi guerrillas. Rwanda has denied the accusations, but has in turn accused the Zairian government of trying to wipe out the Tutsi living within its borders.

``If Zaire brings the war to us, we will fight with Zaire,'' President Paul Kagame told reporters Wednesday in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, according to the Associated Press. ``We are ready to fight, even though we seek no war with Zaire,''

Asked if the countries were headed toward war, he added: ``Going by the declarations made by Zaire, there is every indication that we are going in that direction.''

The refugees arriving here in Burundi said the Tutsi rebels appear to have pushed the Zairian army out of a 50-mile-long region of eastern Zaire and are now in control of it.

With the Zairian military falling back on Bukavu, the Tutsi forces are now herding thousands of Hutu refugees, who had been living in Zaire for up to two years, back into Rwanda and Burundi, they said.

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Photo

PHOTO Two women caring for a malnourished infant listen to a man read a Bible passage at the Mugunga refugee camp in Zaire on Wednesday.

Associated Press