Citation
UNITED NATIONS, April 12 (AFP) - The rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front announced Tuesday a deadline for foreign troops to leave Rwanda or face being attacked.
A rebel representative here, Claude Dusaidi, told reporters that foreign troops had 24 hours to evacuate all foreigners and leave the country.
"If they don't and remain longer than expected we shall engage them in combat," he told reporters.
But Dusaidi said UN peacekeepers were being encouraged to stay. They had been deployed to the east African country to monitor a 1993 peace agreement signed in Arusha, Tanzania.
The United States, France and Switzerland said Tuesday that all of their nationals had been evacuated from Rwanda. Germany said nearly all of its people had left.
France began to pull its 450 troops out of Rwanda Tuesday as the last of its nationals were evacuated, the French defence ministry said.
Also Tuesday, Italy deployed 80 paratroopers in Rwanda to help secure Kigali airport and said it planned to send 80 more troops to Nairobi as the evacuations continued.
Foreigners have been fleeing Rwanda since tribal massacres erupted last Wednesday after president Juvenal Habyarimana died when his plane crashed as it was landing in Kigali, reportedly after being hit by a rocket. Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira was also killed in the crash.
Reports from Kigali said the interim government left the Kigali hotel where it had taken up residence, for an unknown destination as shooting intensified in several areas around the city.
Rebel fighters entered the Rwandan capital, Kigali, and joined a battalion of 600 fellow fighters surrounded by government troops in the city.
The mainly Tutsi rebels, a minority in Rwanda, "have moved through the demilitarized zone, are inside the city and have linked up with the 600 or so (rebel) military personnel who have been in the city," UN spokesman Joe Sills said.
He also said that UN troops from Ghana were in the town of Buyumba 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Kigali which was under shelling.
ltl/dkb/em
