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KIGALI, Jan 21 (AFP) - Three people were killed and dozens injured, 11 seriously, during protests by supporters of Rwanda's Hutu rulers against a peace deal the government has struck with Tutsi rebels, officials said Thursday.
Prime Minister Dismas Nsengiyareye visited Kigali hospital and said two people were killed Wednesday in the capital, where 47 people were injured.
Most of the casualties had bayonet and knife wounds, but others seen at the hospital had been injured by bullets, shrapnel from grenades and clubs.
They all supported opposition parties, but for one who said he was a member of the formerly sole ruling National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRNDD), which organised the demonstrations.
Hospital director Martin Ngabonziza said he regretted that the demonstration had paralysed his services on Wednesday because medical staff had been unable to get to work.
Several houses and cars, mainly belonging to opposition party members, were looted and wrecked, while shops were pillaged, witnesses said.
The demonstrations were organised in eight districts of the small highland nation by the youth wing of President Juvenal Habyarimana's predominantly Hutu MRNDD, opposed to a power-sharing agreement with rebels of the ethnic Tutsi minority.
Kigali was quiet again on Thursday, though youthful backers of the opposition Democratic Republican Movement and Social Democratic Party blocked roads leading from the south into the capital in the morning.
The MRNDD demonstrators were protesting against an accord signed at Arusha in Tanzania on January 9 between the government and guerrillas of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which provided for the entry of the rebels into government.
Joined by members of the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic, a party the MRNDD wants to bring into the new government, youths barricaded the streets and prevented civil servants and schoolchildren from working.
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