Citation
BUJUMBURA, Burundi, April 17 (Reuter) - Rwandan soldiers raped and
hacked to death civilians while battles with rebels for control of the
capital Kigali raged for an 11th day, witnesses said on Sunday.
Officials disclosed that a first attempt at arranging a ceasefire
between the interim government and rebel forces came to nothing on
Friday night.
It is like the mayhem has gathered pace. There are massacres all over
the place. The army's delight is to murder civilians, while civilians
turn on each other in ethnic revenge,
said one witness, trapped in the
capital Kigali.
He said in one incident soldiers tied the hands of civilians behind
their backs and then butchered them with machetes, or just emptied
round after round as if on target practice
.
Sometimes people pleaded for their lives for 20-30 minutes, then the
soldiers just shot them dead,
he said. Women are in trouble, they are
raped first, then killed.
Savage fighting continued for control of strategic hilltops around the
city, he said by telephone.
No one appeared to be in control of Kigali and army units and rebels
were fighting with heavy artillery, mortars and rocket-propelled
grenades, he said.
About 3,600 rebels had infiltrated the city but army units and the
presidential guard were still resisting fiercely.
An interim Rwandan government official said ceasefire talks which began
Friday between rebels and army units had stalled over stringent
conditions each party set ahead of negotiations.
The U.N. Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) said there had been no
further talks on Saturday and none were planned for Sunday as
bloodletting continued.
We are not talking just now,
said an official from the interim
government, which has been rejected as a clique of murderers
by the
rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF).
The Rwandan official was in neighbouring Bujumbura to attend the
funeral of Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira and two ministers who
together with Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana were killed in a
rocket attack on their plane in Rwanda on April 6.
Their deaths sparked an orgy of ethnic violence in Rwanda between the
majority Hutu and minority Tutsi tribes. Thousands of people have died.
No one knows what is going to happen,
a official of the UNAMIR said
by telephone from the U.N. in New York.
An army officer accused unidentified Westerners and Uganda of aiding
the mainly Tutsi rebels in their push for control.
There were two white bodies found when our forces killed 10 rebels in
the north. We cannot explain this,
an official said.
Government conditions for a ceasefire included an immediate halt to
fighting, setting up of patrols solely manned by state police, ending
what it called punitive expeditions
by rebels and neutralisation of
stray soldiers committing abuses
.
The RPF said it wanted the presidential guard which is blamed for much
of the anarchy in Kigali and the countryside to be disbanded and joint
rebel-government patrols launched.
The rebels also wanted the interim government dissolved so it could
open talks with opposition groups on setting up an all-party
transitional administration of national unity.
The RPF on Saturday made an appeal for international aid for thousands
of refugees: Thousands of people are now taking refuge in
RPF-controlled areas and the RPF calls upon humanitarian organisations
to provide emergency aid, especially food, shelter and medicine,
RPF
radio Muhabura said.
A U.N. spokesman said Rwandan refugees fleeing fighting in the capital
and inter-tribal massacres were trapped on the fringes of their central
African country on Saturday.
The spokesman said Rwandan border guards had closed the frontier with
Zaire, halting the flood of refugees fleeing ethnic reprisals. It was
not known how many were blocked at the border but around 10,000 people
had fled to Goma in Zaire.
Belgium said it was set for a fast withdrawal of its 420 United Nations
peacekeepers from Rwanda, its former colony.
Reporters quoted a Belgian minister as saying his blue helmets
were
trapped like rats
at the airport.
Defence officials said the Belgian peacekeeping forces in Rwanda would
start withdrawing from the country from Tuesday.
In the context of the UN peacekeeping operation in Rwanda, the unit
will be relieved tomorrow by the Ghanaians. In principle, they will
begin their withdrawal on Tuesday at the earliest,
a Belgian official
told Belgian RTBF radio.
He said the troops would be evacuated overland towards Tanzania in a
12-hour operation, and they would be accompanied by about 100, mostly
European, refugees.
The Security Council has not yet decided on the future of the
2,500-member UNAMIR, set up last year to help implement a pact signed
in Tanzania aimed at ending a three-year civil war.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
