Word: mortaring
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...World Food Program was able to fly four loaded planes into Goma during the first desperate weekend. But two more relief planes were turned back because of mortar fire, and, unimaginably, a strike by Zaire air traffic controllers arguing with the French over who had responsibility for running the airport. Zairian officials were demanding bribes for landing rights, and blocked some relief flights so that commercial planes could continue to use the airport...
...region fled east over the border of Tanzania, in what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees called "the biggest, fastest exodus" in the agency's history. In so doing, the Hutu created the UNHCR's largest, most crowded refugee camp. Both superlatives, unfortunately, were short-lived. As R.P.F. mortar fire zeroed in on the hills surrounding Gisenyi last Wednesday, another sea of refugees, many originally from the Kigali area, surged out. Jostling along narrow dirt roads, loaded with food, clothes, pots and pans, they massed over the Rwanda's western border. Just over three months ago, 3.5 million...
Until recently, renegade presidential guards zealously protected the grounds from outside inspection. Now the deserted grounds are controlled by rebels who are more tolerant of visitors. As the boom of mortar fire echoes through the surrounding hills, an eerie calm has descended on the mansion. Half a dozen peacocks strut nervously along the garden wall. Inside the house -- a spacious three-story villa of chandeliers and Art Deco furnishings -- papers and clothing litter the floor, presumably from a search for cash or documents. But most of the former First Family's belongings are still here: CDs of Beethoven...
...Right after that they called me over to a little house, where they told me there was somebody down. It is perhaps the worst thing I saw. His name was Emile Renault, and he had taken a mortar shell in his shoulder. He had a gaping hole from his collarbone to his belt. He wasn't dead -- he was looking around -- but you could see his heart beating and his lungs breathing...
Thousands of Tutsi who took refuge in the Kigali sports stadium were bombarded by grenades and mortar fire. U.N. refugee officials said that each night, armed Hutu with lists of professionals and intellectuals would arrive at the stadium, haul out dozens of Tutsi and execute them in a kind of intellectual ethnic cleansing. Last week 21 orphans and 13 Red Cross workers trying to guard them were murdered: in a scene reminiscent of Nazi Germany, the children were picked out of a group of 500 simply because they looked like Tutsi. There were reports that several priests giving refuge...