Citation
MADRID, April 13 (Reuter) - Spain will send transport aircraft to
Rwanda to help evacuate European nationals from the central African
country, Defence Minister Julian Garcia Vargas said on Wednesday.
The Belgian authorities have accepted the offer made on Monday to send
Spanish aircraft to evacuate Europeans and tomorrow a Hercules will
leave to fly the route between Kigali and Nairobi in Kenya,
Vargas
told journalists in Madrid.
A defence ministry spokeswoman said one Hercules C-130 plane would
leave the military base at Zaragoza later on Wednesday. Another was
ready to go but she could not give a time for its departure.
Spain has also offered to send troops to Rwanda, which is experiencing
a new bout in the centuries-old bloodletting between Hutus and the
Tutsi minority. The offer has not been taken up but the troops remain
on alert.
Vargas said three Spanish nuns, who had agreed to be evacuated from
their hospital in Kibuye where they were trapped with a group of
Tutsis, could be out of danger on Wednesday or at least by Thursday.
The nuns had at first refused to leave the hospital, as they feared the
Tutsis would be killed by Hutu fighters gathered outside, but then
changed their mind and said they would go if a Rwandan colleague was
also evacuated.
The Hercules planes are expected to fly the Kigali-Nairobi route for
four or five days, after which time it is expected that all Europeans
will have been evacuated from Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi.
Vargas said there were already 13 planes working the Kigali-Nairobi
route, eight from Belgium, three from Italy and one each from the
Netherlands and Canada.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
