French Rescue 74 Tutsis in Nighttime Rwanda Flights

Making dangerous flights in darkness, French commandos rescued 74 ragged Tutsis from Rwanda late Thursday after they spent days in hiding from marauding Hutu militiamen.

The refugees had bullet and machete wounds, some many days old. They were flown by six helicopters to Goma, the Zairian border town that is the base for the U.N.-authorized French humanitarian mission in western Rwanda.

Filthy children, some barely conscious and obviously unfed for days, were carried off in the arms of medics and gently laid on stretchers. Dazed adults, many with leg and head wounds, hobbled off the aircraft into ambulances.

It was the biggest rescue so far in France’s week-old operation to save people from nearly three months of ethnic slaughter in Rwanda’s civil war. On Tuesday, commandos evacuated 35 nuns and eight orphans from a convent where they were being menaced by Hutu extremists.

The rescue Thursday night was the first to involve a large number of people from the minority Tutsi ethnic group, whose members have been the main victims of massacres. Hundreds of thousands of people have been slain in Rwanda’s civil war.

The refugees were among 200 Tutsis found hiding near Mt. Karoungi, about 30 miles south of Goma in a region where French patrols have been increasing operations to find and aid war victims.