Citation
KIGALI, April 9 (Reuter) - Belgian and U.S. troops were poised on
Saturday to sweep into the killing fields of Rwanda and save nationals
trapped in tribal bloodletting and renewed civil war feared to have
cost the lives of thousands.
The United States, its ambassador's residence in Kigali under attack,
ordered 255 Americans to quit the landlocked central African state. It
said on Friday it was making evacuation plans.
The bloodbath, triggered by the murder of the presidents of both Rwanda
and neighbouring Burundi late on Wednesday, has seen nuns, priests, aid
workers and U.N. peacekeepers fall victim of ethnic hatreds dating back
centuries.
In Gatuna, 80 km (50 miles) north of Kigali, Rwandan rebels said early
on Saturday they had decided to fight government troops rampaging in
Kigali to restore order because of murderous acts
committed there
this week.
The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) is going to protect innocent
Banyarwanda (Rwandan people). Anyone standing in its way will be
considered an accomplice and dealt with accordingly,
a statement
broadcast on RPF radio by the group's commander in chief, Major-General
Paul Kagame, said.
Belgium, shocked by the slaying of 10 Belgian Blue Berets
operating
under United Nations command who tried in vain on Thursday night to
save Rwanda's prime minister from attacking soldiers, has put crack
paratroopers on alert.
But, with the airport controlled by renegade Rwandan army troops,
Brussels was trying first to get the U.N. to change its mandate to let
peacekeepers use force in the former Belgian colony and evacuate more
than 1,500 Belgians and about 600 French nationals.
Belgium has about 400 soldiers in Rwanda as part of the U.N.
peacekeeping contingent and wants any new troops it might send to be
put under U.N. control. They didn't want them wearing two hats,
said
one envoy at U.N. headquarters in New York.
Unconfirmed reports said elite U.S. forces were likely to dash overland
into the hilly capital from neighbouring Burundi early on Saturday.
Prudence Bushnell, a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, refused
to go into detail, saying only there are a number of plans in the
works about evacuation.
But she acknowledged the airport was currently
off limits
.
We issued an ordered departure, and what that means is that we are
going to be looking at plans to take out the Americans, the official
Americans and their dependents, and American citizens,
she told a news
briefing.
Red Cross officials in the rambling hillside capital Kigali reported
the central hospital overflowing with dead and wounded and said the
death toll could run into thousands.
Our medical coordinator visited the central hospital in Kigali and
found it overflowing with dead and wounded. There were 300 to 400
corpses in the hospital, the morgue was full,
Patrick Gasser, deputy
head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) here, told
Reuters by telephone.
Earlier, the head of the ICRC in Rwanda, Philippe Gaillard, said the
death toll probably ran into thousands.
These are brothers killing each other -- there has been an urban civil
war raging in Kigali for the last two days,
he told French radio.
There have probably been thousands of dead in Kigali between Wednesday
night and today.
But Belgian state radio quoted the commander of the Belgian U.N.
peacekeepers in Rwanda as saying a ceasefire was being negotiated and
could come into effect by Saturday morning.
A U.N. peacekeeping force, stationed in Rwanda to monitor a derailed
peace accord between rebels and government forces, said late on Friday
the security situation was still precarious
.
It said in a statement RPF rebels had captured several positions
previously held by an elite presidential guard loyal to dead president
Juvenal Habyarimana. The statement said the RPF had also announced its
intention to send more forces into the capital from bases just outside.
On Friday, before the RPF radio broadcast early on Saturday, the rebel
leader, Kagame, had told reporters: There is absolute anarchy. No
government, no authority. We have to move to restore order if this
continues.
In New York, the International Rescue Committee relief organisation
said 4,000 Rwandan refugees had poured across the border into
neighbouring Tanzania. It predicted the refugee exodus could swell to
150,000.
Rwanda and Burundi have a bloody history of tribal rivalry pitting the
majority Hutu against the Tutsi, the former feudal overlords. Tens of
thousands of members of both tribes have died in recurring bouts of
ethnic bloodletting.
Relief workers said Burundi, where up to 50,000 people died in violence
following the October assassination of the country's first
democratically elected Hutu president, was calm.
Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a Hutu serving in a four-party
coalition with Habyarimana, was killed by soldiers on Thurs day and
three ministers kidnapped.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
