Rwandan Rebels Set to Launch Attack on Key Airport

Rwandan rebels near the capital Kigali are poised to make an assault on the government-controlled airport, a vital link to the outside world for U.N. and relief flights supplying the embattled city.

“Obviously that’s our target,” Rwandan Patriotic Front Capt. Emmanuel Rugema said late Saturday as he pointed to Kanombe airport from Gasogi Hill, where rebels have advanced in the last four days.

RPF artillery and soldiers, dug in among banana plantations on a low hill, overlook the government army’s Kanombe barracks, and the two sides clashed fiercely Saturday.

Fighting around the airport would cut off the U.N. and aid agencies working in the capital, but the RPF says it is a fair target because government troops have used the area as a military base.

“We have asked the U.N. to make the airport neutral, but government forces tend to place guns at the airport and use it for helicopters which attack us,” RPF Vice Chairman Patrick Mazimhaka said in Rwanda.

He pointed out two barracks on the eastern side of the runway and said government artillery fired from that area.

On the same grassy hill around these buildings lies the wreckage of the plane in which President Juvenal Habyarimana was killed along with Burundi’s leader when the aircraft was downed by a rocket on April 6.

Habyarimana’s death sparked mass killings and fighting.

It is still not known who fired the rocket at the plane, but government soldiers have not so far allowed U.N. officials to visit the crash scene. The government says it has retrieved the plane’s “black box” flight recorder--but has not sent it for analysis.

After taking the village of Kabuga recently, the RPF now controls the eastern approaches of the capital 10 miles away and the entire main road to the Tanzanian border.

They also control two hills overlooking the city to the south and a steep mountain to the west, giving them a great strategic advantage in their siege of army barracks around Kigali, whose streets are still mainly under the control of government forces and militia.