Citation
KIGALI, April 15 (Reuter) - A billboard on the road to Kigali airport
shows black hands grasping a single beer beneath the legend: The power
of love.
The power of hate, fuelled by beer and a mass thirst for blood, now
rules the Rwandan capital, transformed into a massive killing ground
after the death of the country's president 10 days ago in a rocket
attack.
Foreign journalists taken in a U.N.-escorted convoy from the Hotel Des
Mille Collines in the city centre to Kigali airport for evacuation on
Thursday saw a city tearing itself apart in a frenzy of slaughter.
Government troops and civilians, still respecting the neutrality of
foreigners and the United Nations, pulled aside makeshift roadblocks.
As if clinging to the idea that they were doing no real wrong and held
no blame, they waved to the U.N. soldiers in the convoy. Some grinned
and gave V for Victory
signs.
But gunmen, roaming the streets in an assortment of looted cars with
their doors pulled off to allow them a greater field of fire, passed
the convoy sullenly, concentrating on hunting down anyone desperate
enough to venture from home.
Those unfortunate to be spotted by the gunmen, or by the beer-drinking
mobs armed with clubs, hand grenades, axes and iron bars loitering on
virtually every street corner, stood little chance of escape.
The bodies of about 10 people lay sprawled in a pile on the side of a
dirt road near the airport. Some single bodies, bloated and stinking
after several days, had been overlooked by the daily clean-up teams of
convicts.
The corpses of other men, women and children shot or hacked to death
near army and mob checkpoints overnight and seen by journalists in the
morning had been whisked away by the afternoon.
Witnesses say thousands more dead remain hidden in churches and homes
where they were slaughtered as government forces and Rwanda Patriotic
Front (RPF) rebels fought for control of the capital of what was once
dubbed The Switzerland of Africa.
With food running short after more than a week of chaos, lines of
barefoot men, women and children carried off sacks of maize looted from
a warehouse during a lull in the fighting.
Scores of cars abandoned by expatriates at the French school on the
edge of Kigali's city centre were looted on Thursday by a mob of more
than 100 people escorted by a Rwandan gendarme toting a rifle.
U.N. officials estimate that up to 3,000 rebels have now infiltrated
into the capital to link up with 600 already there. None could be seen
from the airport road.
Government troops stood guard at the airport entrance while
heavily-armed Belgium paratroops stood in the terminal building.
Mortar fire slammed into the airport perimeter as the journalists and
about 40 refugees boarded a U.N.-chartered aircraft. Armoured troop
carriers and other vehicles careened around the tarmac, speeding to
avoid being hit by incoming fire.
The aircraft left shortly before dusk, taxiing much faster than normal
past the spot where the shells had crashed in earlier and then speeding
into its take-off run.
Near the end of the runway it passed over the wreckage of the plane
which was shot down, killing President Juvenal Habyarimana and the
president of neighbouring Burundi.
The United Nations says it is still unclear who killed the two
presidents, and sparked the bloodbath in Rwanda, as its troops have
still not reached the site.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
