Belgians Fleeing Rwanda as Ethnic Killings Mount : Central Africa: Many foreigners still await rescue in beleaguered capital. Cease-fire accord fails to take hold.

Amid continued fighting and tales of horrific carnage, the emergency evacuation of Westerners from Rwanda gathered pace Monday as more than 100 Belgian nationals were flown out of the country and others awaited rescue in the beleaguered capital, Kigali.

The Belgian Defense Ministry here said that about 250 of the 3,000 Belgians working in Rwanda had been flown to Nairobi, Kenya, by late Monday and that others were expected to leave the war-torn country soon, despite the dangers of the rescue operation.

Frederic Francois, a Belgian television reporter in the capital, reported that a Belgian military convoy moving from Kigali’s airport into the city had been caught briefly in fighting Monday between the mainly Hutu government forces and units of the dissident Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel army made up mainly of ethnic Tutsi. “Like every night, we’ve heard bullets whistling through the Kigali night,” he said.

There were other reports of convoys of Westerners--seeking to avoid some of the heaviest fighting on the main approach road to the airport--making their way through muddy side streets littered with bodies and echoing with the moans of wounded.

But the worst reports of atrocities seemed to come Monday from hospitals, where troops were said to have slaughtered patients, some in their beds as they awaited treatment. In one incident, soldiers repeatedly bayoneted two civilians, who had sought medical care, in full of view of doctors, nurses and patients in a crowded emergency room of Kigali’s central hospital.

Francois reported that about 150 or 160 Westerners of various nationalities had taken shelter at a French school in Kigali as they awaited evacuation, while another 40 Belgians had arrived in the capital from outlying areas. There were also reports that bands of mainly young Rwandan men armed with machetes, spears and bows and arrows were roaming the city.

“The lack of security here is total,” Francois said.

About 400 Belgian troops are now in Rwanda as part of the rescue operation, and Belgian Defense Minister Leo Delcroix indicated Sunday that it could be days before all remaining aid and development workers from his country are airlifted to safety.

A Defense Ministry spokesman here said an agreed-upon cease-fire between the two warring groups had still failed to take hold.

“In Kigali, the cease-fire has not held,” Col. Freddy van der Weghe told reporters. “The (Rwandan) army has been firing sporadically using heavy weapons. The situation is still unstable, (and) there is still shooting between the RPF and the army.”

He said there were unconfirmed reports that a Rwandan Patriotic Front battalion had entered the city.

The majority of French, Americans and other Westerners trapped by the convulsion of violence and ethnic warfare that erupted in the Central African nation after last Wednesday’s apparent presidential assassination have reportedly already fled the country.

The latest frenzy of violence between Rwanda’s majority Hutus and minority Tutsi may have left as many as 20,000 dead, according to an estimate by the International Red Cross.

Belgian national television, which put the death toll in Kigali alone at 10,000, aired footage that showed streets littered with bodies. Victims in the slaughter have included priests, nuns and local employees of international assistance agencies.

In one incident, members of the French-based medical assistance organization Doctors Without Borders arrived Sunday morning at a tent hospital where they had been treating the wounded, only to find that more than 100 of their patients had been murdered by soldiers.

A Swiss radio reporter told Belgian television Sunday that he entered a church, apparently in the Kigali area, and found the bodies of an estimated 70 Tutsi, many of them women and small children.

Long-simmering suspicions of Belgium, the former colonial power in Rwanda, along with rumors that Belgians were somehow involved in the death of President Juvenal Habyarimana, have severely complicated the rescue of Belgian nationals. Habyarimana was killed Wednesday when the plane carrying him and Burundian President Cyprian Ntayamira crashed as it prepared to land in Kigali. Rwandan officials said it was shot down by unidentified attackers.

Forces believed to be part of the Rwandan army or the elite Presidential Guard initially prevented Belgian air force C-130 transport planes from landing at Kigali, and there have been several reports of Belgian nationals being harassed by Rwandan troops as they tried to flee the fighting.

The government here confirmed Monday that six Belgian civilians had been killed in the unrest.

Outside the capital Monday, the Belgian Defense Ministry reported conditions were quiet in the country’s second- and third-largest cities, Butare in the south and Gisenye in the north, but heavy fighting was said to have occurred in the northern town of Ruhengeri.