French Troops Guard Tutsi Refugee Camp in Rwanda; Mass Graves Found

French troops pushing deeper into western Rwanda reported finding mass graves Friday, the second day of their mercy mission.

The French are offering protection to refugees from the ethnic slaughter that has convulsed this central African nation for more than two months. More French troops joined the mission Friday, crossing over from bases in Zaire.

Hoping to ease the suspicions of Rwanda’s predominantly Tutsi rebel movement, French commanders made their first objective the refugee camp at Nyarushishi, where 8,000 Tutsis have been menaced by fanatical Hutu militias. About 50 commandos were on guard Friday, a day after moving in from Zaire.

Leaders of the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front do not trust France because it intervened to prevent a rebel assault on the Hutu-dominated government four years ago.

Still, rebel officers repeated Friday that their fighters will not try to confront French troops if they stay in the government-controlled west.

Gen. Raymond Germanos, assistant chief of staff, told reporters in Paris that patrols checking towns along Lake Kivu on the western fringe of Rwanda found several mass graves. He said there was no immediate word on the number of victims or their ethnicity.

He said French soldiers saw “youths carrying knives and sticks,” but the groups showed no hostility.

France insists that it is not taking sides in the civil war this time and wants only to prevent more massacres, which U.N. officials estimate have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, most of them minority Tutsis.

With the approval of the U.N. Security Council, the French government plans to put about 2,500 soldiers and marines in Rwanda for two months until an all-African U.N. peacekeeping force twice that size arrives.