Guards Hunt, Kill Premier in Rwanda

Marauding presidential guards terrorized tiny, crowded, hapless Rwanda and killed its prime minister and almost a dozen Belgian peacekeepers Thursday in a chaotic, murderous frenzy of revenge for the deaths of two Central African presidents.

Shortly before she was hunted down, Rwandan Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana told Radio France International: “There is shooting. People are being terrorized. People are inside their homes lying on the floor. We are suffering the consequences of the death of the head of state.”

According to confusing, conflicting reports trickling in here and into U.N. headquarters, Kigali, the Rwandan capital, seemed caught in two ethnic battles:

* An onslaught by extreme nationalists among the Hutu people taking out their revenge on moderate Hutus for trying to reach a peace agreement with rebels of the minority Tutsi people.

* A confrontation between the presidential guard and Tutsi rebels who had broken out of their U.N.-protected camp to take on the Hutu avengers.

The turmoil endangered a U.N.-brokered peace process in Rwanda and raised fears of reigniting conflict in the interrelated, adjoining country of Burundi--the site of terrible tribal slaughter, some of it akin to genocide, in the last two decades.

Although numerous reports described the deaths of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprian Ntayamira as assassinations, this could not be confirmed by official U.S. or U.N. sources.

The two leaders, both Hutus, were killed when their plane burst into flames while landing at the Kigali airport Wednesday night. Two Burundian ministers, five Rwandan senior officials and a French air crew died with them.

A Rwandan government official was quoted as insisting that two rockets had downed the plane. The Rwandan Ministry of Defense issued a statement describing the plane as “shot down by unidentified elements in circumstances which are still not clear.”

But in Washington, State Department spokesman Mike McCurry said, “We don’t know the cause of the crash. . . . Those reports have not been confirmed at this point.”

The United Nations has a force of 2,500 peacekeeping troops in Rwanda, and Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali offered its help in investigating the crash and restoring order. But the United Nations said Rwandan authorities had refused to allow the peacekeepers to examine the wreckage.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said members of the presidential guard broke into the presidential palace to seize the prime minister, but she slipped away while her hunters disarmed a U.N. guard. Members of the presidential guard are widely regarded as extreme Hutu nationalists. Most Rwandans regarded the prime minister as a moderate Hutu.

The prime minister, according to Eckhard, tried to take refuge in the compound that houses U.N. Development Program workers and U.N. Volunteers, a group of young people much like the Peace Corps. But the presidential guard broke into the civilian U.N. compound and seized her before she could flee again.

Eckhard said that some sources reported that she was shot on the spot while others reported her killed outside the compound.

The United Nations said the presidential guard had also rounded up several ministers and their families. Their fate was not known, but President Clinton, in a statement condemning the killing of the prime minister, said, “I am equally horrified that elements of the Rwandan security forces have sought out and murdered Rwandan officials.”

The husband and children of Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana, however, were in U.N. protective custody, Eckhard said.

Amid the violence, there were reports monitored in Nairobi, Kenya, that three Cabinet ministers were abducted and 17 Jesuit Rwandan priests were killed.

Amnesty International, the London-based human rights organization, reported that two Rwandan human rights activists--Monique Mujawamaliya and Charles Shamukiga--had been abducted.

The Washington office of another international organization, Human Rights Watch, said Mujawamaliya was on the phone with its staff members when she reported that government troops were scouring her neighborhood. “Please take care of my children. I don’t want you to hear this,” she said before she hung up. Human Rights Watch said it fears she is dead.

During the turmoil, 500 members of the mostly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front broke out of their U.N. camp in Kigali to battle the presidential guard. The battles were described as violent, although the number of casualties was not known. The RPF was in the camp as part of a peace agreement worked out between the Hutu government and Tutsi rebels in Arusha, Tanzania, last August.

In New York, U.N. spokesman Joe Sills reported that 10 Belgian peacekeepers had been killed during the fighting and an 11th body had not yet been identified.

Rwanda and Burundi--part of the German Empire before World War I, then ruled by Belgium until independence in 1962--have emerged only recently from a feudal system in which the tall Tutsis, only 10% of the population in Rwanda and 15% in Burundi, ruled as lords over the far more numerous Hutus. For centuries, Hutus farmed the land in exchange for protection from Tutsi masters.

In Rwanda, a country of 8 million, Hutus have dominated the political system since independence. But Tutsis, accusing President Habyarimana of repression since he took over the government in a coup more than 20 years ago, organized the RPF and provoked turmoil throughout the country in the last few years.

In Burundi, a country of 6 million, the history of the Tutsi-Hutu conflict has been far more bitter. Tutsis ruled from independence until last June. In one of the most depressing eras of African history, Tutsis put down a Hutu rebellion in 1972 and 1973 by trying to slaughter every Hutu with more than a primary school education. Perhaps 150,000 Hutus died in this terror.

An election in June installed Melchior Ndadaye as the first Hutu to serve as Burundi’s president. But the Tutsi-dominated army assassinated him last December, setting off murderous waves of Tutsis and Hutus against each other. The death toll has reached 50,000.