Abstract
- Defense Minister François Léotard confirmed the departure today of the last French soldiers still present in Rwanda. Belgium has also taken the decision to withdraw all its blue helmets deployed in its former colony.
- Fighting resumed this morning in the capital Kigali and the airport was bombarded with rockets.
- Kigali in the eye of the storm. Here are some of the Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels posted on the hills surrounding Kigali. The main body waits at the gates of the city until the evacuations of foreigners are completed to go on the offensive.
- At dawn, fighting broke out against the government forces which still control the center of the city, the southern suburbs and the airport. Six mortar shells fell on the tarmac without injuring the French, Belgian soldiers and foreign nationals.
- Kigali lives in terror: the Hutu, soldiers or civilians, fear being in turn massacred by the Tutsi rebels in retaliation after the carnage which caused thousands of deaths. 30 members of the Red Cross were also murdered.
- Yesterday [April 13], on the road to the airport, Belgian soldiers had to open fire to protect compatriots evacuated in an emergency. This time it was government army soldiers gone hysterical who targeted the Blue Helmets.
- So Belgium decided to repatriate its strong contingent of 400 men, leaving its former colony to dissolve in chaos. The last French soldiers also left the country, 500 in total had come to help the United Nations force.
- The rebels gave the foreign troops 24 hours to pack up. Refusing for the moment to negotiate with the government forces, they barely hide behind their smile their thirst for revenge.
- In Kigali misfortune adds to misfortune: the capital of Rwanda is indeed one of the cities most affected in the world by the AIDS virus. It is estimated that one in three adults is infected. And it was precisely to take care of some forty orphans, themselves affected by AIDS, that a young Frenchman had come to Rwanda on a humanitarian mission. He refused to be evacuated and therefore to abandon the children entrusted to him.
- Marc Vaiter: "When you see children crying because you're being picked up, I think you can't help but stay. I've been with the children for seven months. They know me, I can't abandon them. It's love, it's not courage. There are deaths every day in my area. Finally when there is a major shooting, we all go into a small corridor and then we protect ourselves with the mattresses. There are traumatized children, there are those who have seen their parents die in front of their eyes. We have a three-year-old child who does not stop crying, he does not eat. So we try a little little to relieve him of the fears he has. And then we also had a child who was beaten, his forehead was cut open. He received a blow from an ax. […] I don't know how we are going to do to the rest because we have very, very little money. The situation is really very, very difficult".