Citation
BRUSSELS, April 14 (Reuter) - Eleven U.S. journalists were evacuated to
Kigali airport after being blocked in a hotel in the Rwandan capital, a
Belgian armed forces spokesman said on Thursday.
They were saved by Belgian paratroops. I don't know if they are still
at Kigali airport or are on their way to Nairobi already,
the
spokesman said.
The journalists refused to leave the Hotel Mille Collines when urged to
do so on Wednesday by Belgian paratroops on a rescue mission in central
Kigali.
Earlier on Thursday Belgian army spokesman Colonel Gilbert Hertoghe
said the journalists wanted to leave, but the troops could not get
there because of fighting around the hotel and also on the road from
the airport to the city.
He said the army believed a Belgian family of six had also reached the
hotel, but this could not be confirmed.
Hertoghe said the people in the hotel were the last foreigners in
Kigali. A dozen others, including some Belgians, still had to be traced
and evacuated from southern Rwanda, but the last foreigners in the
northern region, three nuns, were picked up by helicopter earlier on
Thursday.
Belgium, the only western country with rescue forces still in the
central African state, wants to comply with a rebel Rwandan Patriotic
Front ultimatum which said troops sent to evacuate foreigners must be
out by midnight (2200 GMT).
United Nations peacekeeping forces, including more than 400 Belgian
soldiers, are also in the country.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
