Citation
NAIROBI, April 27 (AFP) - Renewed fighting in Kigali, including heavy artillery exchanges, breached unilateral ceasefires declared by government forces and rebels, a UN spokesman said Wednesday.
During intense fighting early Wednesday, a shell landed on a tennis court 50 metres (yards) from UN headquarters near the Amahoro stadium where about 5,000 displaced people are sheltering, spokesman Abdul Kabia said.
By late in the day the Rwandan capital was again reported calm. We drew the attention of both sides to the danger they were exposing us to and the fighting shifted,
Kabia told AFP by telephone from Kigali.
But Kabia said the Tutsi-dominated rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front had shelled the airport because the Hutu-led government forces had set up mortars and artillery pieces there and were firing at rebel positions.
Meanwhile, the head of the ruling National Republican Movement for Democracy (MRND) accused former premier Agathe Uwilingiyimana of plotting a presidential coup prior to her murder on April 7, the date the ethnic carnage which has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives was unleashed.
The United Nations cancelled its flights into Kigali and asked government troops to move their weapons out of the airport, which they promised to do, Kabia said. Four UN planes bringing relief supplies were expected later Wednesday, he said.
According to International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation head Philippe Gaillard, a rocket landed late Tuesday on the X-ray unit at a Kigali hospital near a Rwandan army camp. There were no reported casualties.
He said the streets of Kigali were still largely deserted, except for army, UN and ICRC vehicles.
Both rebels and government forces have declared unilateral ceasefires, and claimed that they were only firing when attacked by the other side, Kabia said, adding that it was impossible to tell who had started the fighting.
The UN has sent ceasefire proposals drawn up by Tanzanian President Ali Hassan Mwinyi and Organisation of African Unity secretary-general Salim Ahmed Salim to both sides and was awaiting a response, Kabia said.
Interim Commerce Minister Justin Mugenzi blamed the failure of the truces on the fact that they were unilateral. We must go back to the documents, negotiate, and reach a common ceasefire,
he said.
UN envoy to Rwanda Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh is in the Kenyan capital Nairobi for discussions with President Daniel Arap Moi.
The Red Cross said Booh-Booh planned to visit Zaire and Uganda to ask their leaders to use their good offices
to end the ethnic and political carnage unleashed after the April 6 death of President Juvenal Habyarimana in a aircraft crash.
Rwanda's bloodbath began when Hutu presidential guards accused the rebels of shooting down the president's plane.
The presidential guards spearheaded massacres of Tutsis and opposition supporters including Hutus. Clashes were also reported between the president's northern clan and Hutus from southern Rwanda.
Meanwhile Wednesday, the head of Habyarimana's National Republican Movement for Democracy (MRND) accused Uwilingiyimana, killed the day after the plane crash, of having been planning a presidential coup.
Matthew Ngirumpatse told a press conference here that two days before the plane crash, the prime minister had called together a few senior officers and told them of her plan to organize a coup against the president.
I am not trying to justify a murder,
Ngirumpatse said here. I am trying to find the reasons which made soldiers do that,
he said.
Ngirumpatse also denied the existence of organized militias within the MRND who have been accused of involvement in massacres, and accused the rebels of having started the bloodletting.
Uwilingiyimana and Habyarimana were members of rival Hutu factions.
dc-at/mt/jms
AFP
