Citation
From Catherine Bond in Kigali.
UNITED Nations military officers in Rwanda yesterday emphasised that,
despite security council doubts on their usefulness in the tiny central
African state, they still had a key role to play in negotiations
between Rwanda's two warring parties and in bringing humanitarian aid
to about 12,000 displaced people in sites near the UN headquarters in
Kigali.
The headquarters are in northern areas of the city, controlled by
rebels for the past nine days. Yesterday these areas were relatively
quiet, and although occasional mortar and smallarms fire indicated
continuing tension, there was little fighting.
A UN military observer who travelled near the army's main base in the
government controlled area of the city said the killing of civilians by
militiamen was continuing. Members of the army are suing for peace
independently of what remains of the government of extremists from the
country's majority Hutu tribe. In an effort to bring about a truce, the
UN brokered talks between Lieutenant Colonel Charles Kayonga, the
rebels' top military man in the capital, and a Rwandan army colonel
yesterday. The two were brought in UN armoured vehicles to the Meridian
hotel in northern Kigali.
Nearly 1,200 ethnic Tutsi, more than half of them children, were
massacred at a church outside the city this week, Belgian media
reported. UN officials said they were not equipped to protect more than
12,000 people who sought shelter at Kigali's main King Faisal hospital
hoping the United Nations would save them from the bloodletting.
The Belgian newspapers Het Volk and De Morgen reported that the
Hutu-dominated presidential guard was being blamed for the massacre of
Tutsi at a church in Musha, 25 miles east of the capital.
At 6:30am Wednesday they kicked in the door and immediately opened
fire with semi-automatic weapons and threw grenades,
Danko Litrick,
the pastor, told Het Volk. Afterwards, they attacked the defenceless
people with knives, bats and spears. There were 1,180 bodies in my
church, including 650 children.
