ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 6, 1997 TAG: 9702060052
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: KIGALI, RWANDA
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
Citing a deadly surge of attacks on humanitarian aid groups, the United Nations withdrew hundreds of expatriate and Rwandan relief workers from Western Rwanda in armed convoys Wednesday and sharply curtailed operations in the rest of this increasingly tense country.
The emergency pullout from four provinces followed the brutal ambush Tuesday of five U.N. human rights staff members, including a veteran British aid worker who was shot to death, a Cambodian field officer who was beheaded with a machete and three Rwandan assistants who were shot or killed by grenades.
In all, suspected anti-government insurgents have killed six expatriates in less than three weeks in Western Rwanda. They are the first foreigners to be slain here since the end of ethnic genocide and a murderous civil war in 1994 drew thousands of aid workers to help rebuild the shattered central African nation.
U.N. officials and others suspect the attacks - which secretary-general Kofi Annan said he has been ``shocked and dismayed'' by - are part of a coordinated effort by ethnic Hutu extremists to drive out foreign relief workers and to destabilize the Tutsi-dominated regime in Kigali.
Rwanda's security has deteriorated dramatically since the mass return of an estimated 555,000 ethnic Hutu refugees from camps in eastern Zaire in mid-November and the forced repatriation a month later of about 473,000 Hutu refugees from camps in Tanzania.
Several hundred Rwandans have been killed in a wave of reprisal attacks and violence since then. They include scores of Tutsi survivors of the genocide who were hunted down to prevent them from testifying at the country's newly launched genocide trials or at the international tribunal on Rwandan war crimes based in Arusha, Tanzania.
The attacks on foreigners began in mid-December with a series of assaults, armed robberies and threats against international aid workers in several parts of the country.
Then, on Jan. 18, two Spanish doctors and a Spanish nurse from Doctors of the World were shot in the head in their home in Ruhengeri province after a robbery. Nitin Madhav, an American working with them, was badly wounded and doctors later amputated his left leg.
Last Sunday, a resident Canadian priest was shot in the back as he was giving communion to his congregation in rural Ruhengeri. Two days later, the five human rights staff members were ambushed with machine guns and grenades as they drove two clearly marked U.N. vehicles on a remote road in southeastern Cyangugu province.
``These men died serving this country,'' Omar Bakhet, U.N. coordinator for Rwanda, told several hundred people who gathered for an emotional eulogy at the Kigali airport late Wednesday. ``Theirs was a noble job.''
LENGTH: Medium: 57 linesby CNB