Citation
LONDON, May 9 (Reuter) - A British mobile airport unit at Mwanza in
Tanzania, set up last Thursday, has allowed 12 cargo flights to land
with supplies for Rwandan refugees, the U.K. Overseas Development
Administration (ODA) said on Monday.
Mwanza is just a concrete landing strip in the bush, with none of the
equipment needed to unload bulky supplies.
An ODA spokesman said the mobile unit includes a high unloader
which
enables cargo pallets to be moved from large aircraft with side cargo
doors onto trucks.
There is also a machine to help re-start aircraft engines, mobile
battery-charged power units for aircraft, mobile tractors to pull cargo
and satellite telephones.
Since it arrived, at least 12 flights have landed at Mwanza carrying
relief supplies, which have been safely unloaded, the ODA spokesman
said.
Mwanza airport in north-west Tanzania is the closest to the Rwanda
border at which large freighter aircraft can land.
For over a month Rwanda has been engulfed by tribal killings sparked by
the death of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and the Burundian
president in a rocket attack on their plane at Kigali airport on April
6.
More than 200,000 people are estimated to have been killed.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
