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BRUSSELS, April 10 (AFP) - The Brussels branch of the humanitarian organisation Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF-Doctors without Borders) is pulling its Belgian staff out of Rwanda, an MSF spokesman said here Monday.
MSF officials said they were alarmed at a wave of anti-Belgian sentiment since the little African country started sliding into civil war last Thursday. Belgium is Rwanda's former colonial power.
The spokesman said some of the organisation's members were stranded at Ruhengery in northern Rwanda.
But he added that MSF staff of other nationalities were heading for Kigali to assist at the town's embattled and over-crowded hospital, and for a hospital and refugee camps at the southern town of Butare.
The MSF spokesman said people running the Butare camps and hospital had abandoned them, leaving more than 150,000 refugees and about 100 hospital patients without support.
Meanwhile, the European Union said it had granted 500,000 European Currency Units (560,000 dollars) in emergency aid for the victims of the civil war in Rwanda.
A spokesman for the EU's executive European Commission said the money would help fund the despatch by MSF of a medical team plus surgical supplies to Kigali.
The Belgian government on Sunday announced an eight million franc (332,000 dollars) grant to MSF to fund a plane-load of medical supplies for Kigali.
A European Commission spokesman said most EU officials in Kigali had been evacuated since a new round of bloodshed started in Rwanda on Thursday and the two remaining officials were due to leave later Monday.
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