Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 29, 1994 TAG: 9404290122
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NAIROBI, KENYA LENGTH: Medium
Rwanda's capital, Kigali, erupted again in heavy fighting that sent shells screaming over the roof of the U.N. headquarters. Huddled in flak jackets, harried officials sought ways to move relief supplies into the bleeding nation.
Private aid workers and U.N. observers, meanwhile, continued the gruesome task of accounting for the dead in the tiny Central African nation, where more than 100,000 people are believed to have been killed. An estimated 1.3 million more have fled their homes since the bloodbath began April7.
The Red Cross said Thursday that the final death toll could be far higher.
"When it comes to horror, this is one of the worst situations we have ever seen," said Tony Burgener, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva.
One Red Cross delegate described the region as "the heart of darkness."
The rampage was touched off by the deaths of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi - both Hutus - in a mysterious plane crash in Kigali on April6.
That reignited a war between the Hutu-led army and the mostly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front. That conflict had been on hold since August, when the two sides signed a peace agreement meant to lead to a power-sharing interim government.
Most of the killing has come at the hands of marauding gangs of youths and loosely formed militias that have butchered men, women and children with machetes, spears and knives.
The U.N. Commander in Rwanda, Gen. Romeo Dallaire, said his men went to investigate a stench near their Kigali headquarters and found 82 bodies within 300 yards of the front gate.
The British aid group Oxfam said the slaughter "amounts to genocide."
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB