Rwandan Government Shelling Forces U.N. Plane to Flee

Rwandan government troops slammed two mortar bombs into Kigali airport as a U.N. plane landed Sunday, forcing the aircraft to take off hastily with an Italian envoy on board.

Franco Rocchetta, an Italian Foreign Ministry official, had been scheduled to spend the day in Rwanda determining how best Italy could help the devastated country. He was to inspect the U.N. headquarters, a local hospital and a church compound where thousands of refugees are stranded.

Witnesses said one 81-millimeter mortar bomb exploded about 400 yards from the Canadian C-130 transporter as it was about to unload its passengers and relief supplies at the airport in the rebel-held east of the Rwandan capital.

The plane then scrambled into an emergency takeoff and lifted off seconds before a second bomb crashed into the tarmac, sending chunks of gravel whizzing past waiting journalists and U.N. officers.

Four more bombs hit the airport less than an hour after the U.N. plane took off and returned to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi where it had started its journey.

Government forces “know exactly when a plane is on the ground because they give us clearance the night before,” said U.N. military spokesman Maj. Jean-Guy Plante.

There were no casualties in Sunday’s incident. While the Hutu-dominated army was flexing its muscles around the airport, the mainly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels were battling closer to the government stronghold of Gitarama, 30 miles west of the capital.

Gitarama and Kigali are the main targets of a rebel offensive that has taken control of about half the country in the last two months. Rebels hold parts of Kigali and are shelling government positions in the center of the city.

The rebels have seized the town of Kabgayi, three miles south of Gitarama, and are moving forward. But Plante said Gitarama is well fortified.

“Their normal procedure when they come to an area like that is to surround it, pound it and infiltrate it,” said Maj. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, a Canadian who commands the 450 U.N. troops in Rwanda.

“We’re not sure how far they’ve got beyond Kabgayi. They are infiltrating Gitarama and going a little west of it.”

The general said he also had word of a counteroffensive by Hutu-dominated government forces in the south of Rwanda, but he offered no details.

An estimated 200,000 to 500,000 people have died in Rwanda’s civil war pitting government forces, mostly from the majority Hutu tribe, against the rebels, made up mainly of minority Tutsis and anti-government Hutus. Most of the victims have been civilians slaughtered by members of a government militia, sometimes with the aid of government troops.