170 Slaughtered by Rwandan Militia, Escaped Priests Say

A Hutu militiaman who boasted he was without pity rounded up 170 people hiding in a Roman Catholic church and took them off to slaughter, two priests who escaped said Saturday.

The priests spoke to reporters moments after reaching the rebel-held section of Kigali, Rwanda’s divided capital. They said they saw the dead bodies of only 10 of the people who had been taken Friday from the church but presumed the others met the same fate.

“They told us many times, ‘We will kill your people,’ ” the Rev. Otto Mayer said of the government-trained militiamen.

An estimated 200,000 to 500,000 people have died since Rwanda’s civil war erupted anew in April, most of them minority Tutsis murdered by militiamen from the majority Hutu ethnic group.

But the Hutu government does not appear to have any real control over the militiamen, who roam army-controlled areas at will, throwing up roadblocks and menacing everybody.

“These people are a power unto themselves,” the Rev. Henri Blanchard said of the militias.

On top of the ethnic bloodshed, the mostly Tutsi rebels have been fighting to overthrow the government.

Mayer, 47, a German, and Blanchard, 58, of France, said they had been trapped in their church-school complex with about 250 people since April 7--the day after Rwanda’s Hutu president was killed in a mysterious plane crash, reigniting the civil war.

For a long time, nobody suspected there was anybody in the church. But there were so many children making noise that eventually word got out.

The priests blame a militiaman called Kiginge for the slaughter of the Tutsis in the church. “Know that I have no pity,” they said he told them.

He led a group of his men to the church and said he wanted to “evacuate” the people inside. The priests became suspicious when he said he intended to take the adults away first.

When Blanchard refused to open the door, a militiaman tossed a tear-gas grenade inside, forcing the people out.

Mayer ran to a nearby Rwandan army headquarters and begged for help but was refused. As he ran back, a mortar round landed nearby and he suffered shrapnel wounds to the left arm.

After the people were taken away on trucks, the priests fled with the local city councilor for the district. As they drove up the street they saw militiamen dumping bodies onto the street from one of the trucks. The bodies had to be dragged away so the priests’ car could pass.

Blanchard said he had tried frantically to get his charges evacuated but succeeded only in getting some of the children out of an orphanage near the church.

The U.N. force in Rwanda, with only 450 men and little equipment, does not have the capacity to force itself into a hostile area and extract threatened civilians.