Citation
NAIROBI, April 15 (Reuter) - Rwandan rebels and government forces
battled with artillery and mortars on Friday for control of their
country's bloodsoaked capital Kigali.
The U.N. Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) said fighting between
Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels and government units was raging at
key points of the city where thousands of people have died in an orgy
of ethnic violence between the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi tribes,
Former colonial power Belgium called on the United Nations to suspend
its paralysed peacekeeping operation in the central African state,
saying it had lost its point.
U.N. officials said that despite six days of fighting, sparked by the
death of President Juvenal Habyarimana in a rocket attack on his plane
last week, neither group seemed to be in control of the city.
Hundreds of rebel fighters have infiltrated the city but government
troops, including men of the presidential guard, were still resisting
fiercely, the U.N. officials said.
Fighting was continuing despite a U.N.-brokered agreement to allow a
further 24 hours to evacuate trapped foreigners.
The agreement was meant to allow Belgian and French forces to avoid
direct combat with either rebels or government army units on roads
leading to the international airport.
It was not clear how many foreigners remained trapped in the country of
eight million people.
Belgium said it was withdrawing its contingent of about 420 men from
the U.N. team and said the 2,500-strong peacekeeping deployment should
be suspended and leave Rwanda because of the brutal rupture
in the
peace and democracy process.
That is why the government is in favour of the suspension of the U.N.
mandate and the withdrawal of troops,
the government said in a
statement.
U.N. officials said it was impossible to keep the mission going without
the well-equipped Belgians.
In Geneva, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said more
than 20,000 people, many of them refugees from neighbouring Burundi,
had fled the current unrest in Rwanda.
UNHCR spokeswoman Sylvana Foa told reporters that 12,000 people had
fled to Burundi, around 9,100 to Zaire, several hundred to Tanzania and
around 100 to Uganda.
Of those that had fled to Burundi, 11,000 were Burundians who fled
ethnic violence in their own country last year. There are around
275,000 Burundi refugees in camps in Rwanda.
Of the 9,100 who had fled to Zaire, 8,000 were Rwandans and 1,100
refugees from Burundi. Those who fled to Zaire and Tanzania were
Rwandans.
Foa said a U.N. team had managed to get into Burundi refugee camps
around Butare, near the Burundi border, where about 140,000 refugees
were holed up.
The team had reported that the situation in the area was stable and had
given the green light for cross-border aid convoys from Tanzania via
northern Burundi to go to the camps.
Foa said there was about a week's supply of food in the camps, even
with all the refugees in them only on half-rations.
She added that High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata had released
$5 million from an emergency fund to tide the operation over until
donor governments responded to an appeal for funds.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has suspended
operations in the country after gunmen pulled six wounded civilians
from vehicles belonging to the local Rwandan Red Cross and killed them
on the spot, ICRC officials said.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
