Citation
By Catherine Bond in Kigali and Eve-Ann Prentice, Diplomatic Correspondent.
REBEL forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front fought their way closer to
the capital, Kigali, yesterday after rejecting an offer by the
country's army chief of staff to enter into negotiations.
Artillery and smallarms fire resounded in the capital in the evening
after a lull in the afternoon as the rebels appeared to be
consolidating their positions in preparation for fresh attacks. In his
appeal for negotiations, broadcast to the rebels on state radio, the
army chief of staff, who ranks number three in the 40,000-strong armed
forces, said Rwandans had suffered enough since the death of President
Habyarimana. He was killed with the President of neighbouring Burundi
when the aircraft they were travelling in was shot down last week as it
approached the capital.
The broadcast said that people were dying of hunger in their homes
because of the conflict. In response, the rebels' radio station
broadcast that as long as the army continued to kill civilians, they
would continue to fight.
As the prospect of an all-out civil war intensified, Boutros Boutros
Ghali, the United Nations Secretary-General, told the security council
that he had called for plans to be drawn up for a possible withdrawal
of the 2,500-strong UN force in Rwanda. He added that the impending
withdrawal of the 440-man Belgian contingent made the UN mission
difficult
. Belgium was the former colonial ruler of the Central
African republic.
In Kigali, officers serving with the UN said that the rebels had
launched a major offensive from the north and east. The target, they
said, was a barracks at Kacyiru blocking the entrance to the colonial
quarter of Kigali where the army headquarters was based. A Belgian
officer said the army was desperate
and predicted a rebel victory.
The fighting between the mainly Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front
and the Hutu army has made it increasingly difficult for Western aid
agencies to operate in the country. Relief workers said yesterday they
were mystified about where tens of thousands of people, swarming out of
the bloodstained capital, were heading as the rebels gained the upper
hand in the battle for Kigali.
Anne-Marie Huby, of Medecins sans Frontieres, said: It is not clear
where the refugees are; we have not seen great numbers crossing the
border into Burundi, Zaire, Tanzania or Uganda, so they must be
displaced somewhere inside Rwanda.
One Western observer said she saw an eight-mile river of people heading
out of the capital. Tony Burgener, of the International Committee of
the Red Cross, said: It is quite impossible to say where they have
gone, though they may be heading south towards Burundi. It is
dangerous, but our people are still cruising Kigali picking up
wounded.
Some Rwandans blamed President Habyarimana, a Hutu, for the scale of
the bloodletting, in which estimates of 10,000 to 20,000 deaths seem
entirely plausible. More people were slaughtered yesterday along
roadsides in a residential area near the heart of the city by militant
Hutu putting up new barricades as the rebels fought their way into
central Kigali.
In about five to ten minutes that it took this correspondent to drive
downhill to deliver film to a Belgian convoy at the French school and
return to our hotel, three men had been killed at a barricade where
militants had earlier waved us through with a smile and a bonjour
madame.
Western troops still in Kigali said government forces had little hope
of repelling the advance. There is heavy fighting. Most of the
strategic hills around the city are now controlled by our forces,
Wilson Rutayisire, an official of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, said.
The rebel leader is Colonel Alexis Kanyarengwe, a former Interior
Minister.
