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HEAVY fighting raged in the Rwandan capital last night as government
troops fought rebels to the west of the city and French paratroopers
escorted the first foreign nationals out of the main airport.
Bursts of mortar, rocket and machine-gun fire stopped scores of United
Nations employees from reaching the airport to be evacuated on the
first UN plane to reach the city.
French troops who arrived in the capital yesterday escorted 68
foreigners onto a waiting French air force aircraft, which took off
amid heavy shooting less than a mile from the runway, despite reports
of a ceasefire being agreed.
Four Belgian Hercules C-130s arrived at the airport yesterday afternoon
carrying 200 troops, who plan to escort other foreigners out of the
country. Belgium had initially been refused permission to land at the
airport, following accusations by the Rwandan military that Belgium
supported the Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels now fighting government
troops on the outskirts of the capital.
Burning houses sent palls of smoke across the lush hillsides around the
city as the fighting intensified.
The 13 staff of the French relief agency Medecins Sans Frontieres were
pulled out, leaving hundreds of people wounded in tribal fighting
without any medical care.
Yesterday we were treating 100 people at Kigali hospital,
said
Christophe Fenasse, MSF administrator. Most of them had been injured
with machetes and knives and were living in tents at the hospital. This
morning all of them were slaughtered when other people came with
machetes to the hospital.
Staff from a Catholic orphanage at Masaka, seven miles west of Kigali
were slaughtered by teenagers brandishing knives and machetes at midday
yesterday, nuns from the centre said before they flew out with 97
orphans last night on Belgian aircraft.
There were a group of 50 youngsters, all Hutus that we knew, who came
to the orphanage at around 12.30,
said Sister Rafaela, a Polish nun
who has worked at the centre for 18 years. They started to steal all
the money we had. We gave them everything to quieten them down. But
then they started killing the nurses and the other staff with their
knives and pistols. They even had hand grenades.
They threw all the people they had attacked into a pit for the toilet.
Some were still alive, and they were thrown into the pit. The ones who
were unconscious we had to leave.
Members of the presidential guard, which has been held responsible for
leading much of the tribal slaughter since the death in a plane crash
of Rwanda's president Juvenal Habyarimana last week, were yesterday in
nominal control of the airport. However 350 French paratroopers who
arrived from the Central African Republic yesterday afternoon patrolled
the airport perimeter while Rwandan forces looked on.
The government controls the town, the presidential guard controls the
airport and the RPF controls the west and north,
said Butch Waldrum,
transport adviser to the UN's 2,500 peacekeepers, who has been
attempting to evacuate UN employees, but the airport is really under
French control, through their relationship with the presidential guard.
The town is a disaster. I have been trying to take people out for
three days, and we have had a couple of guys killed in the process. The
worst thing seems to be the banditry. It's random, and the bandits have
a system where they blow you away if you're in a civilian car,
he
said.
The Foreign Office issued advice via the BBC World Service and the
British High Commission in Kampala, Uganda, for them to find French or
Belgian troops to escort them to Kigali airport or to join convoys
heading for Burundi or Tanzania.
French evacuees leaving aboard military aircraft from Kigali airport
last night had remained shut inside their houses since last Thursday,
when President Habyarimana's death led to an orgy of killing by his
Hutu tribesmen who accused the RPF rebels of bringing down his plane.
There were events that I have never seen in my life,
said one
Frenchman resident in the country for two months. I heard my Rwandan
neighbours being killed.
They did not threaten us. But we can't stay. There were riots, then a
small civil war, and now there's a war with the RPF.
