Citation
MULINDI, RWANDA, April 11 (Reuter) - Rwandan rebels said on Monday
their 20,000-strong guerrilla force was closing in on the chaotic
capital Kigali from three sides and resistance from government units
was disintegrating.
In Kigali, a top French military commander who declined to be
identified, advised reporters to leave the city saying the rebels were
within 10 kms (six miles).
The rebels are just 10 kms outside the city. This place is going to
get dangerous,
he said.
Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) chairman Alexis Kanyarengwe told Reuters
in rebel-held territory: Our forces are advancing...government
soldiers do not have the will to put up resistance so we shall know in
days what the resolution is.
We are hopeful that the strength of the RPF coupled with support of
well-wishers among the Rwandan people will allow us to avoid the chaos
of somewhere like Somalia,
he said.
RPF officials said two battalions of some 1,200 rebels were on the
outskirts of the capital in the area of Kabuye waiting to enter the
city and reinforce a 600-strong battalion there.
Those two battalions are just a vanguard of a much larger force,
said
RPF spokesman Wilson Rutayisire in the guerrilla headquarters of
Mulindi in the hilly north.
The battalion has been in Kigali as part of a nine-month old peace
agreement to end Rwanda's three-year old civil war.
The rebels say it has been under attack from government units since
President Juvenal Habyarimana was killed when his plane was hit by
rockets on Wednesday.
A further 1,200 rebels are bringing up the rear of the advance party in
the district of Rutongo about 15 kms (nine miles) north of Kigali,
Rutayisire told Reuters.
Since the RPF launched a fresh offensive on Saturday, its forces have
crossed the U.N.-monitored demilitarised zones along a front about 150
kms (94 miles) across northern Rwanda and plunged into the valleys and
hills further south.
Guerrillas in full combat gear could be seen through the mist on the
move south in long lines.
Rutayisire said the RPF was moving on the northwestern road to the
government garrison town of Ruhengeri, towards the capital from the
northeast town of Gacibu and from the north.
He said government garrisons have been completely encircled and
although the RPF is meeting resistance some government forces had
indicated they did not want to fight.
The RPF regards as its main enemy the 2,000-strong presidential guard
which it blames for most of the killings in Kigali.
Kanyarengwe said the RPF could have won the civil war on the
battlefront a year old when the rebels gained ground in an offensive
that lasted days, but that it had previously believed a political
settlement could be reached.
He said the RPF would now take control, restore order and begin fresh
talks with other parties to establish a transitional government.
Kanyarengwe, a 57-year-old former interior minister from Habyarimana's
government, said the RPF rejected an interim government set up in
Kigali.
They are just a screen for the killers. We do not accept their
legitimacy. They are responsible for resumption of
He added that those the RPF beleived were responsible for massacres in
Kigali would be brought to justice once law and order had been
restored.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
