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The Rwandan capital of Kigali descended into chaos yesterday as
troops, presidential guards and gendarmes swept through the suburbs
killing the prime minister, United Nations peacekeepers and scores of
civilians.
Gangs of soldiers and youths kidnapped opposition politicians, and
killed members of the minority Tutsi tribe, clubbing them to death
with batons, hacking them with machetes and knives, or shooting them.
'It is becoming messier and messier. There are a lot of people with a
lot of guns taking different orders and shooting and detaining
people,' said a Western diplomat. 'A casualty toll is impossible.'
'Various clans are murdering others. There is a general score settling
going on in Kigali,' one diplomat said.
Late last night several thousand soldiers of the rebel Rwandan
Patriotic Front were moving from camps near the Ugandan border to
seize power in Kigali, according to UN officials. The Front has
promised to co-operate with the UN in restoring order from today.
All day the sound of gunfire, grenades and mortars resounded through
Kigali and plumes of smoke rose from the hills where most of the
people live.
The violence followed the death of the presidents of Rwanda and
neighbouring Burundi in a plane crash on Wednesday night. The Rwandan
ministry of defence says the aeroplane was brought down by a rocket as
it began its descent to Kigali airport.
Troops of the Rwandan presidential guard surrounded the wreckage and
disarmed and detained 13 Belgian UN observers who tried to investigate
the cause of the crash.
The bodies of 11 of the Belgians were later found. 'They were dead
from bullet wounds. You can call it an execution,' the UN spokesman,
Mukhtar Gueye, said. Two remain unaccounted for.
The 2,500-strong UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda , which is supposed
to monitor the ceasefire between government troops and Front rebels
agreed last August, was powerless to stop the slaughter.
'The gendarmes are preventing us from crossing into certain parts of
the town,' Mr Gueye said. 'Those may be the areas where there are most
casualties.'
The fighting was so heavy that International Red Cross officials were
unable to venture out to rescue the wounded. Dozens of bodies are
thought to be lying about in the town.
The soldiers belong to the late President Juvenal Habyarimana's
majority Hutu tribe.
'There is shooting, people are being terrorised, people are inside
their homes lying on the floor. We are suffering the consequences of
the death of the head of state,' the prime minister, Agatha
Uwilingiyimana, told Radio France Internationale shortly before she
was herself murdered.
UN officials in New York said peacekeepers guarding her had been
disarmed and she had been taken by armed men from a UN aid compound
where she had sought refuge.
According to the UN spokesman, in the morning soldiers kidnapped three
government ministers and their families. The ministers are now feared
dead. Soldiers also killed 17 Jesuit priests at a religious centre,
French radio reported.
In the middle of the afternoon heavy fighting erupted around the
parliament building, where under the terms of the peace agreement a
600-strong Front force is based, guarded by UN peacekeepers. It seems
that some Front troops tried to leave the building under UN protection
but government soldiers fired on them. The fighting continued for
about two hours and there were reports of a Front attack on the
headquarters of the presidential guard.
The Front says it is not a tribal force but it is dominated by the
Tutsis. Although the Front denies it shot down the aeroplane carrying
the presidents, forces loyal to Habyarimana's memory blame the Front,
its sympathisers and Tutsis in general for the death of their leader.
Potentially the most dangerous development is the reported advance on
the capital by the rest of the Front's force from its base at Mulindi
near the Ugandan border. The move could restart the three-year civil
war which displaced nearly a million Rwandans and devastated the
economy.
Most people in Kigali were too frightened to leave their homes
yesterday. But hundreds of terrified Tutsis searched for safe houses
and some took refuge in the national stadium, where the UN
peacekeeping force is based.
