BUJUMBURA, Burundi -- Yovita Barampanze's legs were amputated after she stepped on a landmine last year, so her husband, Stany Mamirampa, had to carry her on his back and scurry along with their five children to escape last month when Hutu rebels and the Burundian army clashed near their home outside Burundi's capital, Bujumbura.

The family recently returned to find their house demolished, so it was time to move. Again.

"I can't remember how many times we've moved since the war began," said Mamirampa, a 40-year-old farmer. "Too many times."

Burundi's brutal civil war has killed 300,000 people since fighting erupted in 1993 between the Tutsi-led army and opposition forces representing the country's Hutu majority. And the relentless combat has a created a tortuous cycle of displacement among the living that has forced more than one million people from their homes, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

"Unfortunately, the state of displacement in Burundi is a constant state," said Nicholas McGowan, a U.N. spokesman in Bujumbura.

Nevertheless, the suffering in Burundi, a small landlocked east African nation of 6 million people, has garnered scant international recognition.

Burundian President Domitian Ndayizeye signed a peace agreement last week with the Forces for Defense and Democracy, the main Hutu opposition group, but the Forces for National Liberation, another powerful Hutu rebel force, continues to battle both the military and their rivals in the FDD throughout the country.

The African Union has deployed more than 2,800-peacekeeping troops to assist in ending Burundi's civil war, but they have not yet intervened. Burundi's minister for peace and reconciliation, Luc Rukingama, described the situation as a glass half full. "We have political agreements, but no cease-fire," Rukingama said. "Everybody must stop killing, stealing and raping, or it will not work."

A recent U.N. report said the ongoing civil conflict displaces 100,000 people every month, at least temporarily, and those living in rural areas outside the capital are particularly vulnerable in this agrarian society where 70 percent of the population lives in poverty.

Mamirampa and his family are among 109,000 people currently displaced throughout the Bujumbura Rural Province. They are temporarily settled in the village of Rushubi, where a narrow, rutted clay road wends up a verdant mountainside blanketed by banana and palm trees.

The Civil Volunteer Group, an Italian aid organization, distributed wheat and medicine week before last to 15,000 people displaced in Rushubi, who stood patiently in line outside blue tarpaulin tents.

Cecilia Roselli, a volunteer group representative in Bujumbura, said the ongoing war limits aid deliveries outside of the capital.

"There is a movement of people every week, and some have become completely dependent upon humanitarian assistance," Roselli said. "Unfortunately, we cannot always reach them because there is fighting every day."

The combat has reached the outskirts of the capital, where Amnesty International estimates that 30,000 people have recently been forced from their homes.

Mathias Barimwabo, chief administrator of Kamenge, a suburb on the outskirts of the capital, said more than half of the population in his area alone, approximately 25,000 people, are displaced.

Therence Ndarubiyamno, a 37-year-old mason, whose left leg was shot off in a 1994 firefight between the Burundian army and opposition forces, has taken sanctuary within the compound housing Kamenge's psychiatric hospital, despite shortages of food, water and basic shelter.

"We sleep on the ground wherever there is space, but we don't even have plastic sheeting to cover us," said Ndarubiyamno, who has stayed on the hospital's grounds for more than two weeks with his wife and five young children.

Antoine Colperart, 58, who is with Belgium's Charity of Brothers Congregation and currently works as a nurse at the hospital, said 8,500 people have come there seeking refuge during the past three weeks, despite the inhumane conditions.

"We are like an embassy here," said Colperart, who has lived in Burundi for 15 years. "Some people come here only for the night, but many stay because they are afraid to return to their homes because of the fighting."

Jean-Marie Nkurunziza, a soft-spoken 22-year-old university student, recently secured the front door of his family's house in one nearly deserted Kamenge neighborhood. Nkurunziza said he leaves Kamenge before nightfall, but is never certain where he is going to spend the night.

"Sometimes I stay with friends, sometimes I stay with classmates," said Nkurunziza, whose parents and 10 siblings are dispersed throughout Bujumbura. "I must adapt to this way of life until the fighting ends."

The endless crush of fighting has forced more than 385,000 civilians to seek refuge in the 226 permanent displacement sites established throughout Burundi in the past decade, according to the U.N.

Care International is funding construction for 80 houses at one permanent displacement camp for ethnic Hutus, who comprise 85 percent of the Burundian population, on a government-donated 10-acre plot two miles west of Bujumbura.

Stanisias Niyonzima, Care's project manager in Bujumbura, said 225 Hutu families currently need housing there, but no money is available to build them.

"We give priority to those who arrived here first, and to those who seem most vulnerable," Niyonzima said.