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The interim government has said it was shot down as the two leaders returned from talks in Tanzania on the long-running ethnic tension in their countries.
The Rwandan army chief of staff has also charged the UN troops with "partiality," saying they "failed" in their mission to oversee a peace agreement signed with the rebels last August to end three years of civil war and bring the rebels into a broad-based transition government prior to elections next year.
The trouble has sparked debate at the UN over the future of its mission in the tiny eastern African state and the current president of the UN Security Council, Colin Keating of New Zealand, told reporters Tuesday to expect a decision "in the next day or two," now that the joint French-Belgian evacuation of foreigners was "virtually completed."
A UN officer Wednesday said the rebels, who sent reinforcements to help 600 fighters pinned in the capital where they were stationed last December to protect RPF leaders, were trying to take a military barracks in the north of Kigali. Fighting also continued around the old parliament building in the east of Kigali, near the base of the RPF battalion.
The government said there was fighting in other parts of the city, and asserted that it was not led by RPF reinforcements sent in from their northern camps since last week but by "elements who infiltrated the capital well before" the plane crash.
At the United Nations in New York, Rwandan rebel representative Claude Dusaidi told reporters late Tuesday that foreign troops had 24 hours to evacuate the last foreigners and leave the country or face combat, though he encouraged UN peacekeepers to stay.
He said the 3,100 rebel troops now in Kigali "hope to full control" of Kigali Wednesday. He also said the RPF remained committed to the August peace plan and wanted to implement it after "restoring order" in the capital.
France started pulling out its 450 troops as the last of its nationals were evacuated, the French defense ministry said.
Belgium, which also said it would make an immiment decision on whether to keep its UN troops in Rwanda, said Wednesday it had asked the UN to open an enquiry on the death of 10 Belgian UN troops killed April 7 in Kigali.
Altogether the UN has 2,300 soldiers and 300 observers in Rwanda from 23 countries. Nearly 1,000 are from Bangladesh, 840 from Ghana and 420 from Belgium.
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