Citation
KIGALI, April 8 (Reuter) - Fighting raged for a second day in the
Rwandan capital Kigali and around its rebel-held parliament early on
Friday as rival tribes and political groups battled for control in
renewed civil war.
With the country in a power vacuum following the killing of Rwanda's
president on Wednesday night and its woman prime minister on Thursday,
a new day began with the scream of mortar bombs and crackle of rifle
fire.
A Rwandan resident said there was an orgy of killings out there
.
Fires raged in the city as rebels and soldiers battled around
parliament and people from the minority Tutsi and majority Hutu tribes
fell to slaughtering each other.
They fight, then rest, then resume. It's calm one moment, then
suddenly there are explosions,
the resident said.
In Brussels, the Belgian government -- former colonial power in Rwanda
and neighbouring Burundi -- said soldiers had killed 10 Belgian U.N.
peacekeepers on Thursday.
U.N. officials feared violence between Rwanda's Hutu and Tutsi tribes
would spread outside the capital, battered by its worst clashes since
the start of civil war four years ago.
The U.N. Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) appealed to Rwandans to
end violence and urged countries that helped broker a peace accord
between the rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) and the government last
year to act to restore order.
The rebels already in Kigali had been based in parliament since
December after they entered the city peacefully to take part in the
peace plan.
In one incident the Kigali resident saw government soldiers hack to
death a young man they accused of being an RPF fighter.
President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu who took power in 1973, and
Cyprien Ntaryamira, president of neighbouring Burundi, died when a
plane bringing them back from regional peace talks in Tanzania was hit
by a rocket on Wednesday night.
It was the first time in modern history that two heads of state were
assassinated together. Who killed them was not clear. The
predominantly-Tutsi RPF denied involvement.
U.N. officials said casualties from Thursday's violence were
surprisingly high
, but further details were due to be issued on
Friday.
A Belgian statement said the 10 murdered soldiers, members of the
second commando battalion of Flawinne in Belgium, were in charge of the
security of Rwandan Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana.
A U.N. official earlier reported at least 11 Belgian peacekeepers were
killed after being disarmed by presidential guards on their way to the
airport to investigate the crash.
A U.N. spokesman in Kigali said Uwilingiyimana, a Hutu, was killed on
Thursday near the presidential palace in an area where U.N. forces had
been denied access.
Members of the 700-strong presidential guard abducted opposition
leaders and their families, including three government ministers, the
president of the Constitutional Court and president of the national
assembly, U.N. officials said.
Residents said many killings were being carried out by members of the
army who were searching house-to-house for Tutsi RPF sympathisers and
their Hutu political allies.
Youths wielding machetes, knives and clubs stalked Kigali, settling
tribal scores by hacking and clubbing people to death or simply
shooting them, witnesses said.
The Belgian news agency Belga said on Thursday that troops had killed
17 Rwandan priests.
Belgium said it was planning ways to protect its 1,500 civilian
nationals and 800 troops in Rwanda.
A late night cabinet meeting had analysed the situation particularly
with a view to taking appropriate measures for the protection of our
compatriots
, said a government statement.
Asked by reporters at the United Nations in New York whether Brussels
would mount a rescue operation, Belgian ambassador Paul Noterdaeme
said: We will see, everthing is possible
.
The U.N. Security Council denounced the violence.
The council took no fresh decision on whether to leave U.N. troops in
place. It asked Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to gather
information as soon as possible.
U.S. President Bill Clinton expressed horror that elements of the
Rwandan security forces
had murdered officials.
U.N. officials said the RPF, whose 600 fighters in Kigali joined the
fighting, told U.N. peacekeepers its reinforcements would move to the
capital from their strongholds in the north.
Battles between troops and the RPF shattered a peace accord made in the
Tanzanian town of Arusha last August, aimed at ending a civil war that
erupted in October 1990.
Hatred between Hutu and Tutsi, former feudal overlords, predate Rwandan
and Burundi independence from Belgium in 1962.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
