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BRUSSELS, April 10 (AFP) - Three Belgian civilians in addition to 10 Belgian parachutists have been killed in Rwanda since the current wave of bloodshed began there on Thursday, Belgian Foreign Ministry officials said here Sunday.
They said the three civilians had been killed on Thursday, and Defence Minister Leo Delcroix added that the deaths had taken place not in the capital Kigali but to the north of the country.
The Belgian news agency Belga quoted church sources in Rwanda as saying that a man and a woman of Belgian nationality, both married to Rwandan Tutsis, had been killed, but that the children of one of the couples had been spared.
Many thousands of Rwandans have reportedly been killed since Wednesday, mainly in ethnic bloodshed pitting the country's majority Hutus against the Tutsis.
Belga quoted the church sources as reporting that 61 people had been massacred in front of a church in the Gikundo region despite attempts by a foreign priest to prevent it.
The Hutu-Tutsi carnage was sparked by the deaths Wednesday in a plane crash of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira, reportedly because their aircraft was shot down over Kigali.
Subsequently, 10 Belgian members of the UN Assistance Force in Rwanda were killed after unsuccessfully trying to prevent the murder of Rwandan Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingyamana.
Church and aid workers have reported two other incidents of massacres involving Rwandan priests.
In one, soldiers killed eight Rwandan priests, nine young women on a spiritual retreat and another two people at a Jesuit mission in Kigali.
In the other, several Rwandans were reported killed at a Franciscan mission in northern Rwanda. In both incidents, foreigners at the missions were left unmolested.
The church sources quoted by Belga said Rwandan prisoners were seen on Sunday loading dead bodies onto trucks.
A Rwandan human rights group said here Sunday that among the tens of thousands of Rwandans killed since Wednesday were many carefully-targeted political opponents of the government and human rights activists.
The Committee for the Respect of Human Rights and Democracy in Rwanda said many prominent Rwandans were also missing after being kidnapped by the Presidential Guard, which killed the Rwandan premier and the 10 Belgian troops.
The committee added that the UN Assistance Force in Rwanda had lost credibility through its impotence to stop the massacres of Rwandans.
The UN force is charged with promoting a return to democracy in Rwanda under the UN-supported Arusha accord signed last August by the Hutu-dominated government and the rebel Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front.
But the committee, which supports the accord, said the latest provisional government formed in Rwanda after Wednesday's air crash was fiercely opposed to the Arusha pact and to any power-sharing with the Tutsi minority.
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