Citation
KIGALI, April 7 (Reuter) - Troops, presidential guards and gendarmes
rampaged through the Rwandan capital Kigali in a chaotic orgy of
bloodletting on Thursday, following the killing of the presidents of
Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi.
Gangs of youths bent on settling tribal scores joined the soldiers or
roamed the streets of Kigali hacking or clubbing civilians to death
with machetes, batons and knives or simply shooting them, diplomats or
witnesses said.
Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, 57, and Burundi President
Cyprien Ntaryamira, 38, killed late on Wednesday when rockets downed
their plane, were Hutu, the majority tribe in both countries long at
odds with the Tutsi minority.
Ntaryamira's predecessor was murdered by Tutsi in October.
A U.N. spokesman, meanwhile, said members of the presidential guard on
Thursday abducted three government ministers, their families and three
U.N. military observers.
It is becoming messier and messier. There are a lot of people with a
lot of guns taking different orders and shooting and detaining people,
said a Western diplomat. A casualty toll is impossible.
The diplomat and witnesses spoke of fighting all over the city.
Security forces, at times at odds with one another, roamed the capital
attacking people.
Various clans are murdering others. There is a general score settling
going on in Kigali,
one diplomat said.
U.N. forces patrolled with security forces in some parts of the city
while fellow peacekeepers elsewhere were ordered to withdraw or be
shot, a U.N. spokesman said.
Witnesses reported a lot of shooting around the parliament building in
the centre of Kigali, where 600 rebels of the Tutsi-dominated Rwanda
Patriotic Front (RPF) have been camped following the signing of a peace
accord in Tanzania in August.
Bitter rivalry between Hutu and Tutsi, the former feudal overlords,
predate Rwanda's and Burundi's independence from Belgium in 1962.
Rwanda, famed for its rare mountain gorillas, called itself the
Switzerland of Africa
before a 1990 rebel invasion.
Tens of thousands of Tutsi and Hutu have died in ethnic slaughter in
both countries over the years. The death toll in Burundi since renegade
troops killed its first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, on October 21
is up to 50,000.
Shooting raged in Rwanda on Thursday despite government appeals on
state radio for calm and for people to stay at home.
Belgian BRTN radio said several ministers and top officials had been
killed and the Tutsi-dominated army had mutinied.
You really don't want to go out there when we can hear the shooting.
No one knows who is in control,
one resident said.
There is shooting, people are being terrorised, people are inside
their homes lying on the floor. We are suffering the consequences of
the death of the head of state,
Rwandan Prime Minister Agatha
Uwilingiyimana told Radio France Internationale.
The Belgian news agency Belga said an attempt to arrest Uwilingiyimana
failed after loyal soldiers stopped presidential guard taking her away.
Mukhtar Gueye, spokesman for the U.N. Assistance Mission in Rwanda,
said presidential guards had seized Rwandan Information Minister
Faustin Rucogoza, Labour and Social Affairs Minister Landuard Ndasingwa
and Agriculture Minister Frederic Nzamurambaho.
The identity of the killers of Habyarimana and Ntaryamira, returning
from a peace summit in Tanzania, was a mystery.
A government official at Kigali airport to welcome Habyarimana home
told Reuters two rockets hit the plane as it landed. They did not have
a chance, the plane just burned.
A government statement said two Burundi ministers, five senior Rwandan
officials and the French crew of the Rwandan presidential jet also died
on the plane.
A Rwandan Defence Ministry statement broadcast on Rwandan radio said
the presidential plane was shot down by unidentified elements in
circumstances which are still unclear.
Habyarimana took power in Rwanda in a coup in 1973 and was blamed by
the RPF for repeated delays in forming a new government and parliament
to end the civil war.
The RPF denied any involvement in the rocket attack.
Rwandan Foreign Minister Jean Marie Ngendahayo told reporters that the
deaths of Habyarimana and Ntaryamira were no accident: What happened
was an assassination.
African and Western nations condemned the killing of the two presidents
and called for peace rather than more bloodshed.
Professor Filip Reyntjens, an expert in Central African affairs at
Antwerp University, said his sources in Kigali told him that military
troops had arrested several leading Tutsis.
Government sources said Belgian soldiers under the U.N. mission in
Rwanda were guarding the airport, which was closed.
Gueye said the airport was quiet but elements of the presidential guard
prevented U.N. troops from reaching the crash site to investigate and
demanded that they hand over their w eapons.
He denied a report quoting Germany's ambassador in Kigali, Dieter
Hoelscher, as saying eyewitnesses had reported that mortar bombs were
fired at the U.N. headquarters in the capital.
He also declined to give the nationality of the abducted U.N.
observers.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
