Citation
By Sam Kiley in Goma.
French special forces yesterday rescued 35 nuns, including a Briton and
two Americans, in a dawn raid on a Rwandan government bastion. More
than 100 commandos flew into Kibuye, on the shore of Lake Kivu, to
rescue the nuns from their convent where they had been held for more
than two months while 10,000 Tutsi and opposition supporters were
slaughtered.
French reconnaissance troops decided that it would be impossible to
guarantee their safety as the slaughter in the surrounding area grew.
The nuns said they had been threatened with murder by government
militia every day and had heard from inside their building the screams
of people being killed. At least 3,000 people were killed in the church
at Kibuye, where last weekend women from the Hutu tribe were
frantically cleaning the floor to hide evidence of the murders before
the French arrived.
The British nun, Sister Susan McLean, 42, who has been working in
Rwanda for 13 years, said with cool understatement that the situation
had been dicey
as the organised slaughter of thousands in the
lakeside resort began. We didn't really go out at all in the two
months and a half,
she said.
The 35 nuns and novices, including Belgians and Rwandans from both the
Hutu majority and Tutsi minority, and eight orphans in their care were
flown by helicopter to a French base at Goma, eastern Zaire.
Yesterday the nuns looked sad and drawn as they spoke briefly about
their ordeal. They said that often they had been taken outside their
convent during the night by militiamen and threatened with murder. They
were divided into their nationalities and ethnic groups during the
sessions and the Tutsi sisters were abused physically and
psychologically.
Sister Susan's mother, Marie McLean, 66, of Billingham, Cleveland, said
yesterday her daughter had told her that the soldiers would come and
try to find out if they were hiding anyone. If they were, their lives
would be forfeit. They would drag the nuns from their beds every night
and put them against a wall and threaten to kill them.
The nun's father, Peter, 76, a retired joiner, said: We've been saying
our prayers, and now we're on cloud nine.
Sister Susan refused yesterday to identify which people had been behind
the threats and killings. I don't know the difference between the Hutu
and the Tutsi,
she said.
Sister Marie Julian, from Buffalo, New York, said that, although they
had been protected by local gendarmes, the Tutsi sisters were most at
risk from the militias. There were visits in the night, the calling of
threats, that sort of thing,
she said.
The rescue of the nuns is the first time French troops have flown
people out of Rwanda since the start of Operation Turquoise last week.
They have provided security for 8,000 Tutsi and intellectuals in a camp
near the southern city of Cyangugu, but elsewhere they have found it
hard to find people to save.
Six Jeeps filled with marines went in search yesterday of 10,000
refugees reported to be living about 25 miles north of Gisenye, on the
border with Zaire, but without success.
The operation yesterday received its first medical and food aid for
refugees when a chartered plane flew in 40 tonnes from France to Goma.
Gerard Larome, director of an emergency team at the French Foreign
Ministry, told reporters it was the first of ten or 12 airlifts in the
next week of French medicine and food.
He said the first objective of the operation was to provide aid in a
secure way to the needy because of the troops' presence. Officials said
that Francois Leotard, the French Defence Minister, would travel to
Zaire and Rwanda today to meet the troops and visit several refugee
camps.
In the meantime, the United Nations tried yesterday to get food to
8,000 trapped and terrified civilians sheltering in a church complex in
the battered government-held sector of Kigali, the Rwandan capital. The
civilians, hungry and in fear of their lives, have been caught on the
wrong side of the battle lines as the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic
Front tries to pound goverment loyalists into submission. We are
trying to get food to the Holy Family (church complex), and there is a
very remote chance we will evacuate people from there as well,
said
Major Jean-Guy Plante, the spokesman for the UN Assistance Mission.
Many of the people at the Holy Family complex are Tutsi and in danger
of being pulled out and butchered by pro-government Hutu militias who
mill around at the entrances to the buildings.
The church, close to the front line where rebels are pressing a fierce
assault with daily mortar bombardments of government areas, also
shelters many majority Hutu fleeing the predominantly Tutsi rebels.
