Citation
BRUSSELS, April 20 (Reuter) - The medical charity Medecins Sans
Frontieres (MSF) said on Wednesday there had been massacres around the
Rwandan border town of Butare where thousands of people were trying to
cross into Burundi.
At the road barricades erected by the militias, people trying to
escape were killed on the spot. Dozens of bodies were seen by our teams
at these barricades,
MSF said in a statement from Brussels.
Dozens of people, stabbed, but also with bullet and grenade wounds,
have arrived in the last few hours at the hospital in the centre of the
town (Butare) where an MSF team is operating,
the statement said.
MSF said eye-witnesses had told medical staff that people trying to
flee ethnic bloodshed in Rwanda had been systematically killed.
Despite these killings, MSF said hundreds of wounded had managed to
reach the border between Rwanda and Burundi.
The aid group said it had set up an emergency medical centre at Cayanza
in northern Burundi to treat the wounded.
Since last night, 24 seriously wounded people have been treated (in
Burundi). The search for wounded people in the hills is continuing
today,
MSF said.
Rwanda has been plunged into a vicious tribal war between the majority
Hutu and minority Tutsi tribes since Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana
was killed when a rocket hit his plane on April 6.
Tens of thousands of Rwandans are believed to have died in the
bloodshed and up to two million have been driven from their homes or
camps.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
