Word: rwandans
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...numbing stacks of corpses were the grisly hallmark of a horrifyingly intimate style of slaughter, literal hand-to-hand combat. The predominantly Tutsi forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the Hutu-dominated army and presidential guard battled each other with mortars, machine guns and hand grenades. But what kept people shuddering in the darkest corners of their homes were the machete-armed gangs of Hutu men on a wild killing spree, often drunk and dressed in startling fashions looted from abandoned stores and houses of the dead. Swaggering Hutu men and boys paraded through the city, loaded with weapons...
...When Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane was shot down by a rocket last Wednesday, previously moderate fighting between the powerful Tutsi minority and the president's Hutu loyalists escalated to tragic proportions. As in Bosnia and Croatia, race has become the only criterion for murder. Hundred of thousands of people--Hutus and Tutsis--are fleeing Kigali, but they have nowhere to go. Espcaping the fighting gives them a chance at life, but starvation is already claiming thousands in the barren lands around the city...
After three years of fighting, Habyarimana's regime in Rwanda, made up largely of fellow Hutus, had reached a peace accord with the mainly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front last August. But Habyarimana failed to form an interim government to last until new elections could be conducted. Burundi's Ntaryamira had been elected President in January by the National Assembly after the assassination of fellow Hutu Melchior Ndadaye in a bloody coup attempt last October. With Burundi's army still under the control of the Tutsis, however, Ntaryamira had been unable to stop the rash of ethnic clashes that have killed...
Representatives of the church and aid organizations promoting human rights and the peace process in Rwanda also suffered. Five priests and 12 young women gathered for a retreat in a Jesuit center near the airport were massacred. All were Rwandan; most were Tutsi. The guards and regular troops of the mainly Hutu Rwandan army reportedly killed Rwandan staff members of several aid organizations while expatriates were forced to look on at gunpoint...
...Rwandan capital of Kigali exploded in bloody ethnic violence Wednesday after the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi died in a suspicious plane crash. Rampaging soldiers killed thousands, including 10 U.N. peacekeepers, Rwanda's acting Prime Minister and more than a dozen priests and nuns. A cease-fire agreement lasted less than 24 hours before rebels escalated attacks on government troops. On Saturday French and Belgian soldiers began to evacuate foreigners...