Citation
KIGALI, April 14 (Reuter) - Rwandan army units and infiltrating rebels
battled in and around Kigali on Thursday for the second day running.
Mortar and artillery fire echoed around the capital's lush hills. The
rebels denied a U.N. report they had agreed to truce talks.
We are not going to negotiate a ceasefire with anyone,
Rwanda
Patriotic Front spokesman Wilson Rutayisire told a Reuter reporter at
the rebels' base of Mulindi north of Kigali.
U.N. Security Council President Colin Keating of New Zealand said in
New York late on Wednesday that talks would be held under U.N. auspices
between the RPF and a recently-installed interim government, most of
whose members have fled the city.
That is the first optimistic sign we have seen perhaps since the
beginning of this crisis, and the Security Council wants to welcome it
very much and encourage that process,
Keating told reporters.
But dawn brought more terror to a city paralysed by a week of tribal
slaughter in which tens of thousands of people have perished.
Mass hysteria is sweeping the town, they are sure the rebels will kill
them. There is no control,
said a witness.
A handful of Western journalists still in the capital saw fresh bodies
littering the streets on Thursday.
New roadblocks sprang up all over the city, which was growing more
dangerous by the hour.
Hutus tribesmen -- drunk on banana beer and terrified of reprisal
massacres by the Tutsi-dominated RPF -- were threatening to kill anyone
they did not recognise.
As morning mist cleared over the cool green hill of Central Africa,
soldiers at one checkpoint stood swigging beer from two-litre bottles,
proudly displaying three fresh corpses nearby.
Midway between two checkpounts, four more bodies were laid out. Two
were men, one a young women and the fourth a boy aged about 10, shot
through the left eye.
The approaching rebels aim to take over a city bathed in the blood of
thousands slaughtered in killings sparked by last week's killing of
Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana.
Belgian paratroopers protecting the French School evacuation point in
downtown Kigali pulled out overnight. A hundred looters moved in to
grab possessions left by fleeing foreigners.
The last Belgian soldiers planned to leave the city on Thursday,
complying with an ultimatum by the RPF which says foreign troops sent
to evacuate their own citizens must be out by midnight local time (2200
GMT).
The U.N. said in New York that Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
had called for plans to be drawn up for a possible withdrawal of the
2,500-strong U.N. force in Rwanda.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
