Citation
JARI, Rwanda, April 20 (Reuter) - Tread softly here, this is a bad
place,
whispered the guerrilla in the darkness as the rebel Rwandan
column penetrated government army frontlines.
On one of the steep hills looming above us, the muzzles of government
machineguns flashed and a mortar bomb made the sound of an express
train as it roared through the valley towards rebel trenches on the
opposite hillside.
We held our breaths when a porter lost his footing on the muddy path.
His burden of Katyusha rockets clattered to the ground.
In an abandoned village nearby a dog barked, but we had not been
spotted and minutes later the column was moving again.
Guerrillas of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) have been advancing on
foot to attack the capital Kigali by sneaking behind government lines
at night and through villages stinking of death.
A team of three Reuters journalists joined a rebel supply column taking
weapons and ammunition from the RPF's northern stronghold to their
comrades fighting government forces for control of Kigali.
You must be ready for ambushes. This area is infested,
said our
guerrilla guide Lieutenant Frank Ndore, as a line of 300 porters set
off at dusk last week.
From their invasion of Rwanda in October 1990 until two weeks ago, the
rebels and government forces faced each other from hillside trenches
across the north of the tiny country.
But a nine-month-old peace agreement between the opposing parties --
never properly implemented -- fell apart after President Juvenal
Habyarimana and the president of neighbouring Burundi were killed in a
rocket attack on their plane on April 6. Mystery surrounds who fired
the missile.
Habyarimana's militias of the Hutu clan and his government forces went
on the rampage, killing countless thousands of Hutus who supported
opposition parties and members of the Tutsi clan who contribute a
greater part of the RPF's 20,000-strong army.
RPF officers said they were forced to infiltrate government lines and
move on the capital to restore order and reinforce a battalion of 600
rebels who had been deployed in Kigali as part of the peace agreement
since December.
Empty ammunition boxes and bullet casings littered the path our column
took, evidence of how the first few thousand rebels punched holes
through government positions to reach Kigali within three days of
Habyarimana's death.
Most of the RPF forces were moving south, but at one point we saw
rebels making the long walk back to hospital in Mulindi, their northern
headquarters, bearing blood-spattered wounded comrades on makeshift
stretchers.
As it neared the capital, our column slept in a deserted village where
bloated corpses lay stinking at night and covered with flies during the
day.
You smell that? That's the perfume we have got used to fighting to
become free,
said one young lieutenant.
A few peasants had not left their homes. Some clapped their hands and
pleaded with the guerrillas to protect them from Hutu militias. Others
looked on silently with hatred in their eyes.
Some villagers who saw us travelling with the rebels apparently
reported our presence to government soldiers.
Later, on the British Broadcasting Corporation's Swahili service, a
Rwandan correspondent quoted sources as saying that white mercenaries
fighting for the RPF had been killed in the area we were moving
through.
Finally, the exhausted column struggled to the top of a hill
overlooking Kigali.
The rebels fell to eating beef slaughtered along the way and carrots
plucked from a deserted garden as they gazed at the plumes of smoke
rising from mortar explosions in the embattled city.
Are you happy to be here?
I asked Captain Manuel, one of the column's
leaders whose face was hardened by years of war.
I don't know,
he said.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
