Rwanda Cracks Down on Militants

The Rwandan army has launched major operations against Hutu militants it says are responsible for recent massacres and assassinations of local officials, foreign aid workers and survivors of previous genocide, officials said Sunday.

The military action, apparently the largest since more than 1 million Hutu refugees swarmed back from camps in Zaire and Tanzania late last year, is aimed at restoring security in the Hutu strongholds in western Rwanda where the worst of the bloodletting has occurred.

United Nations and government officials say thousands of extremist Hutu militiamen and former soldiers who took part in the 1994 genocide of ethnic Tutsis slipped back into Rwanda with the returning refugees and now are attacking the Tutsi-dominated regime and foreigners working with it.

Hundreds of people have been slain since December in a wave of violence, although the majority were killed in other Rwandan army sweeps and reprisals against Hutus, according to U.N. human rights reports.

Details of the latest offensive were unavailable here Sunday. United Nations and other aid groups fled the area last week after five members of a U.N. human rights monitoring team were ambushed and killed within sight of a Rwandan army base in rural Cyangugu province.

The victims included three Rwandans and a Briton who were shot to death and a Cambodian who was beheaded.

Three Spanish aid workers were killed in their home Jan. 18 by unknown gunmen who had robbed them and demanded their passports. A resident 61-year-old Roman Catholic priest from Canada was shot to death Feb. 2 as he celebrated Mass in his church.

The growing insecurity prompted the United Nations to freeze most aid operations in the country Wednesday, to withdraw most of its 550 expatriate staff to Kigali, the capital, and to impose nighttime curfews and other restrictions.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and other groups flew dozens of staff members out of the country.

A U.N. convoy of staff and supplies returned Sunday for the first time since the pullout Wednesday to the border town of Gisenyi, about 50 miles west of Kigali, under heavy guard by armed Rwandan troops.

“We’re going one step at a time,” said a U.N. official.