Word: kigali
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Rwandans packed into Kigali's hotels, huddling in the dark hallways without food or beds, hoping the few foreigners there would protect them. Their terror only increased as the foreigners slipped away. At a hilltop compound for the insane, a group of Belgian nuns and lay brothers abandoned 200 of their patients in a desperate rush to escape. For days the clinic had been surrounded by bands of machete-armed Hutu men. The foreigners had little doubt about the future of their patients or the 500 Tutsis who had come for refuge $ from the fighting outside. "They're finished," said...
...tribal carnage entered a second week in the tiny central African country, the streets of Kigali were the domain of marauding bands of men hacking down women and children on sight. Severed heads and limbs piled up on street corners, the smell of decay fouling the air. No matter how many bodies Red Cross workers collected, more appeared. Boys carrying hand grenades threatened passing cars, while drunken soldiers at makeshift barricades terrorized civilians scurrying by. In a city without electricity or water, the foolish few who ventured out into the streets to forage for food were too traumatized...
...paraded through the city, loaded with weapons and cheap liquor. Many of the 20,000 victims died simply because they were Tutsis. "More and more of the civilian population armed with machetes are ruling the streets," said Philippe Gaillard, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kigali. "The army can't control them...
...bloodshed began after Presidents Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi, both Hutus, died when their plane crashed at Kigali airport almost two weeks ago. A military team from Belgium, the former colonial power in Rwanda, has concluded that the jet was shot down with rockets belonging to the Rwandan army -- most likely by the presidential guard angered at plans to include Tutsis in the government. The 600-strong guard began murdering all the Tutsis they could find. The army soon joined in, as much to loot as to kill...
After France, Belgium, Italy and the U.S. flew in military rescue units, most of the 2,850 terrified foreign diplomats, aid workers and missionaries were evacuated. Some wept with guilt over the fate of Rwandan friends left behind. Theresa Scimeni, an American teacher at the International School in Kigali, recalled the horror before she and her husband and two young daughters were rescued. "We heard each of the houses near us attacked in turn. There would be firing, screams, then silence," she said, safe in Nairobi. "Then a few minutes later the men would move to the next house...