Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 14, 1994 TAG: 9404140352
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press Note: below
DATELINE: KIGALI, RWANDA LENGTH: Medium
A midday cease-fire was shattered in the afternoon by mortar fire and gunbattles. By nightfall, five mortar rounds were falling each minute during a battle for a building near parliament and the capital was anarchic. Mobs of marauding youths roamed in commandeered cars.
The U.N. Security Council was to meet behind closed doors later Wednesday in New York to consider pulling its 2,500 peacekeepers out of the Central African nation, where a weeklong ethnic slaughter has left an estimated 20,000 dead.
Foreigners have nearly completed their exodus, emptying Kigali of almost all but international relief workers and the battling government troops and Tutsi rebels.
As many as 20,000 mainly Tutsi fighters of the rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front began moving into the city Tuesday, reinforcing small groups already in the capital. A fragile cease-fire between the Hutu-dominated army and the Tutsi rebels fell apart in the ethnic fighting that followed the president's death in a plane crash last week.
A joint International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders convoy of nine vehicles carrying two surgical teams and 25 tons of medical supplies reached Kigali from Bujumbura, the capital of neighboring Burundi. Later Wednesday, the Red Cross began feeding Rwandan refugees in Kigali.
The relief convoy was the first to reach the blood-soaked capital since the bloodshed erupted.
Doctors Without Borders field officials said 150,000 to 200,000 people are fleeing in every direction from central Rwanda, where the capital is, to seek safety in Zaire, Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda. Many of the refugees were walking through the lush green hills, avoiding the main roads for fear of government roadblocks and vehicles carrying soldiers.
``Many, many people have been killed,'' said Phillippe Gaillard, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kigali. ``Everyone is fighting here. The army is fighting the RPF [rebels]. Part of the civilian population is fighting against the other part of the civilian population. The people are fighting against their own brothers, and this is very sad.'' A Belgian
military spokesman said a cease-fire went into effect at midday, but within hours, sporadic fighting and mortar fire erupted, then intensified. By nightfall, the city was in anarchy.
En route to the airport, reporters saw a stack of about 20 bodies with gruesome wounds in an alley.
by CNB