Citation
MADRID, April 15 (Reuter) - Extremist Hutus armed with machetes and
guns murdered some 1,180 Tutsis at a church in Rwanda this week, the
Spanish daily El Pais reported on Friday.
El Pais special correspondent Alfonso Armada, whose graphic account was
accompanied by photographs of the bodies, reported from the scene that
the massacre occurred on Wednesday in Gikoro, 40 km east of the Rwandan
capital Kigali.
Quoting a Slovenian priest, Father August Horvat, Armada reported that
the minority Tutsis had been hacked to pieces by members of the
majority Hutu tribe, who bore machetes, clubs, spears, grenades and
guns.
It has been the Hutus. All the dead are Tutsis,
Armada quoted Horvat
as saying.
The El Pais correspondent quoted a Croatian priest, Danko Litric, as
giving the death toll of 1,180. Horvat, however, said the mutilated
bodies were impossible to count
.
Thousands have died in Rwanda in an orgy of bloodletting sparked by the
death of President Juvenal Habyarimana in a rocket attack on his plane
last week.
Yesterday, in the middle of the jumble of cadavers, amputated body
parts and shoes lost in an archipelego of blood, one arm moved, sweetly
asking for help. No one, myself included, offered it,
Armada wrote.
He, Horvat and Litric tried to get help from Italian troops stationed
nearby, but the Italians said they had a specific assignment to rescue
three priests.
We can do nothing. It's not our affair,
the Italian commander said,
according to El Pais.
When the Italians returned to Gikoro after rescuing a Belgian priest
from the village Umudugudu, the arm was finally still, like the pole of
an invisible flag,
Armada wrote.
Armada, who photographed the bodies of those massacred, said he came
across Horvat and Litric hiding in the parish house. The two priests
had worked in the village for six years.
The fighting in Rwanda has caused an exodus of refugees and three
Spanish nuns who had been trapped in a hospital in Kibuye with a group
of around 20 terrified Tutsis arrived in Madrid on Friday.
The three nuns had agreed to be evacuated on condition that a Rwandan
colleague was also saved.
One of the nuns, Sister Pilar Espelosin, had been in regular contact
with Spanish radio stations and had often said she feared for their
lives as Hutus armed with machetes and spears gathered outside.
We were very afraid but we managed to save everyone including four
children who were with us,
she told journalists on her arrival with
other evacuees in Madrid.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
