FBIS4-48277 "drafr095_a_94008"
FBIS-AFR-94-095 Daily Report 16 May 1994
CENTRAL AFRICA Rwanda

RPF Shoots at Convoy Carrying Former French Official

RPF Shoots at Convoy Carrying Former French Official

UN Official Comments

AB1605194294 Paris AFP in English 1859 GMT 16 May 94 AB1605194294 Paris AFP English BFN [By Annie Thomas] [Excerpts] Nairobi, May 16 (AFP) -- Rwandan rebels sealed the road from the embattled capital Kigali to Gitarama, where the government fled last month as ethnic carnage engulfed the country, a UN official said Monday [16 May]. The army denied that their foes had seized control of a stretch of the road from Kigali to Gitarama, 40 kilometres (25 miles) to the southwest. But Abdul Kabia, executive director of the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda, said the rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) had cut the road as they tightened their grip on Kigali, which they have sealed off on three sides. Kabia said government forces now controlled only the western part of Kigali and the rebels were trying to sever their supply lines. The RPF, dominated by the minority Tutsi tribe that has borne the brunt of six weeks of bloodletting in which 200,000 people have been butchered, claimed responsibility Monday for shooting at an army-escorted convoy carrying former French humanitarian minister Bernard Kouchner on a mercy mission. [passage omitted covered in referent items] Kouchner left Rwanda on Monday after spending five days trying to persuade both sides to allow civilians trapped in the capital and still being massacred by death squads to leave via "humanitarian safe corridors" which he wants the army and rebels to keep free from fighting. Kouchner was still trying to secure an agreement to begin evacuating civilians Monday, but UN sources said his mission could still produce results. Sporadic firefights broke out in different areas of Kigali on Monday as rain lashed the surrounding hills, once green with banana trees but now brown and barren, stripped by hungry displaced people. It was a relatively quiet day after 10 days of fierce artillery duels, said UN spokesman Moctar Gueye, who was slightly hurt when bullet fragments struck his face during the attack on Kouchner's convoy. "Everyone's waiting," Gueye said. The UN has protested to the rebels over the shooting, and has also complained to the army over its failure "to ensure the security" of Kouchner. The UN Security Council is preparing to approve Secretary-General Butrus Butrus-Ghali's call for the UN force in Rwanda to be increased to 5,500, according to reports from New York. [passage omitted] French officials said several African countries including Tanzania, Ghana and Nigeria were willing to contribute troops to a strengthened UN force. Eleven UN peacekeepers have been killed in the past six weeks in Rwanda, 10 of them Belgian soldiers allegedly murdered by the presidential guard. Most of the 200,000 Rwandans butchered with machetes or clubbed to death with wooden stakes were Tutsis or opposition supporters from the majority Hutu tribe.