Citation
Kigali, April 11 (Reuter) - Rwandan soldiers bayonetted to death two
patients at Kigali's central hospital on Monday where the dying lay on
piles of butchered bodies.
Two men in civilian clothes -- one of them wounded -- had just arrived
on foot outside the emergency room when three soldiers walked up to
them from behind.
The soldiers pulled out bayonets and plunged them repeatedly into the
two men who fell to the ground.
The attack which lasted less than a minute took place in full view of
hospital staff and people waiting for treatment. No one moved until the
soldiers had walked out of sight.
The two bodies were quickly removed. Witnesses said such killings by
the army were common. Seven patients at the hospital, which is
surrounded by army checkpoints, were killed on Sunday by troops who
beat others with rifle butts.
Aid workers said the two men were apparently targeted because they were
members of Rwanda's Tusti minority, which has borne the brunt of
massacres at the hands of the Hutu majority since President Juvenile
Habyrimana was killed last Wednesday in a rocket attack on his plane.
The hospital, Kigali's largest, faces the Hotel De Diplomats where the
country's fragile government is holed up under army guards as battles
between government troops and Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels swept
towards them on Monday.
The hospital is overflowing with an estimated 700 wounded men, women
and children -- some lying on dirty mattresses and floors next to
corpses draped in blankets.
Relatives, desperate for the two doctors left at the hospital, pleaded
with any passing visitor for treatment or help in moving patients to a
safer place outside the capital.
At the back of the hospital compound about 40 bodies were rotting in
the drizzle, piled in places up to seven metres deep.
A young naked woman lay on the top of the fly-covered, stinking pile,
her limbs stiff with rigor mortis. Most of the dead were men but there
were also several children -- boys and girls with gruesome knife
wounds.
Through a dark corridor full of relatives cooking food for patients
over open fires and washing in a dirty drain was another pile of about
60 corpses.
On the edge lay two young men -- one with his throat cut and the other
with stab wounds to his face and chest. They wept in mourning as they
tried in vain to pull away from the mound of death.
Men and women standing around the pile burst out laughing when the
bodies moved but a grim-looking man in a black coat told journalists:
Please stay here. They are going to kill us all if you leave.
A doctor said the two wounded men would soon be dead but it was too
dangerous to move them.
Despite the mayhem at the hospital, International Committe of the Red
Cross (ICRC) delegates managed to evacuate more than 100 wounded in two
trucks to take them to a hospital in the town of Kabguyi, 50 km (30
miles) southeast of Kigali.
The ICRC requested and received an army escort to protect the
casualties as they were carried out on stretchers.
Four soldiers in a car also escorted them on the road to Kabguyi with a
pass issued by the defence ministry written on a piece of paper ripped
from a school book.
ICRC officials said a surgical team with much needed basic medical
supplies was expected to arrive at the hospital on Tuesday.
Before the army escort arrived, a patrol of French paratroopers arrived
in vehicles mounted with machine guns and drove into the hospital.
An ICRC official said he was happy to see them because the atmosphere
was extremely tense and he believed the casualties would need
protection as they left the hospital.
The officer in charge asked whether the wounded were Hutus or Tutsis.
When told they were mostly Tutsis he said he had orders to tour the
area and could not stay at the hospital. The heavilly armed patrol of
about 15 French soldiers in red berets then drove off.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
