MUGUNGA, Zaire - The wretched of the earth are finally going home.

In a scene more suited to the Book Of Exodus than the dawn of the 21st century, an estimated 700,000 Rwandan refugees trudged on foot toward the border with Rwanda yesterday, returning home after two years of squalid exile.

"I'm just tired of being a refugee," said Gaspar Hezabandi, who with his wife and four children was among the hundreds of thousands who suddenly took to the road, carrying all their worldly possessions.

Traversing the same route they took to flee Rwanda two years ago, the Hutu refugees trekked to the border and streamed across to an uncertain future carrying water cans, mattresses, burlap sacks and suitcases.

"It is just one human wave of people," said Ray Wilkinson, a spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

"This massive movement of people has taken everyone by surprise, but from a purely humanitarian point of view the floodgates are open.

"People are just streaming across the border and we've stopped counting," Wilkinson said. "I think that all of them are on the move, all 700,000 who were in the camps around Goma."

The vast majority of the refugees are Hutus who fled Rwanda in 1994 fearing retaliation for the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis orchestrated by Hutu extremists. They remained in the camps largely because of intimidation tactics used by members of the Interahamwe death squads that planned the genocide.

The refugee camps also housed soldiers from the former Rwandan armed forces, who were also implicated in the genocide.

But after holding the refugees as human shields for several weeks while fighting raging battles with rebels who seized a swath of eastern Zaire, the Interahamwe seemed to evaporate into the interior of Zaire yesterday after a major rebel bombardment near Mugunga the day before.

"When there was fighting, the soldiers of the Interahamwe, they just ran away," said Mathieu Karisengi, who was balancing a black bag and a foam mattress on his head. "When they left, we stayed in Mugunga, so now we can return home."

There are hardly enough words to describe the scene yesterday along the road from Goma to Sake, through the Mugunga refugee camp.

The 30-kilometre stretch of highway was one continuous teeming mass of humanity.

But what was most remarkable was the silence. Except for the occasional sound of a baby crying, or a car honking its horn, the ragged column of hundreds of thousands of people was virtually silent. Only the sound of sandals and bare feet rustling past was constant.

Aid workers who had been waging a campaign to get to the stranded refugees were forced to admit yesterday the humanitarian crisis got up and walked to them.

And the future of a planned multinational intervention force - which was supposed to secure corridors to reach the refugees - seemed uncertain as the bedraggled masses surged across the border into Rwanda.

Rebel leader Laurent Desire Kabila told reporters later in the day there was no longer any reason for foreign troops to come to Zaire, and that he would now oppose such a force.

"The peaceful return of refugees in hundreds of thousands makes the coming of the force useless and unacceptable," he said. "We have achieved their goal peacefully."

Along the side of the road where refugees walked were empty camps where stick-frame huts had been stripped of their plastic covering. One man carried live chickens. A little girl drummed on a yellow plastic water can as she marched toward the border.

A wide-eyed little boy carried a wooden board.

"We left the Katale camp two weeks ago because of the fighting. We've had nothing to eat since," said Sylvestre Sengamana, 27. He and his wife Christine Mukanbutiye each carried babies on their backs, their two girls, children of the camps.

"Some people died in the forest, so many people I can't count," Sengamana said. "There was no water and no food there. We dug up roots to eat them and to get water.

"There were many refugees from Katale who came to Mugunga and on Thursday some of them began to die," said Mukanbutiye. "When the rebels began to fire on the camp, the Interahamwe ran away, but we stayed. We prayed. It is God's will that we go back to Rwanda."

The refugees walked past a number of bodies along the road, decaying corpses apparently of those who had attempted to flee Goma during the fighting between rebels and Zairean soldiers two weeks ago.

One corpse was still gripping a tartan suitcase. Some of the refugees stopped briefly to look at the bodies, then forged on.

The smell of the corpses blended with that of the smudgy fires burning at the side of the road toward late afternoon as some of the refugees began to settle down for the night, cooking beans and herbs in blackened pots.

A woman with two huge bags held up by a strap across her forehead bobbed past. A child was strapped to her back. On the road beneath her feet were spent rifle cartridges from fighting that took place on what, only days ago, had been the frontline.

Some people cut down the few remaining bananas from trees along the road, and foraged through the fields for other food. Near Mugunga four men carried a sick woman on a stretcher. They said she had fallen ill with malaria in the camp.

Another man carried a grown man piggyback.

"There was sickness and hunger, so we finally decided to leave," said Jean Baptiste Nizeyimana.

A woman walking past, sweat rolling down her cheek as she balanced a huge weight on her head, still managed to flash a smile at the reporter who was looking at her.

Jean de la Croix was sitting on a rock at the edge of Mugunga camp, balancing his 7-month-old daughter on his knee.

"I'm from Gisenyi prefecture in Rwanda, and I've been here for two years," he said. "But the bombardment near the camps made me move."

The Interahamwe soldiers who used to patrol the camp had been disarmed yesterday by rebels, de la Croix said adding some still remained among the refugees.

Others worried about the prospect of returning to Rwanda, where they feared persecution as Hutus.

"I want to stay behind, but I have nothing. No food, no water," said one man. "So I have to go home."

Relief workers were scrambling to deal with the massive influx, rushing in trucks and buses from Rwanda, bringing emergency medical and food supplies to the border, and sending water tankers along the road to Mugunga.

By nightfall, it was pouring rain and hundreds of thousands of refugees blocked from crossing the border until morning cowered under plastic sheets along the streets of Goma, or huddled around smoky fires.

But on this day wracked by events of Biblical proportions, there was at least one small miracle.

A baby girl was born on the road from Mugunga to a couple named Sylvestre and Josephine.

Within metres of the border with Rwanda, the couple took shelter from the rain last night under the eaves of a building.

"The delivery was fine. My wife and the baby are healthy," the man said. "Now we're going home."

They named the little girl Abizeye. In the Kinya-Rwanda language it means "those who have hope."