The Electronic Telegraph 25 April 1995 WORLD NEWS

The Tutsi soldier looked at the wounded Hutu and said: 'Die, you cockroach, die'

A STINKING jumble of bloodied clothing, muddy sleeping mats, broken pots and human waste carpeted the ground inside the mission compound at Kibeho refugee camp where thousands were slaughtered on Saturday.

Squatting among the mess were a thousand or so Hutu men, women and children, many of them bleeding from open wounds, refusing to move. It was a pitiful and squalid scene, redolent with fear and hatred, that told the tale of Rwanda's enduring misery.

On the surrounding hillsides, the skeletal remains of row upon row of abandoned huts stretched as far as the eye could see. Everywhere there were signs of panic-stricken flight - overturned chairs, pots still full of food, shoes, broken radios.

A cordon of well-armed Rwandan Patriotic Army soldiers encircled the mission compound, intent on completing the task of closing the book on sprawling Kibeho camp, seen by the Rwandan authorities as a haven for perpetrators of last year's genocide.

"There are people in there with guns," an Army officer said. "If they don't come out we'll attack them." His heavy leather boot left a muddy footprint on a photograph of two smartly-dressed Hutu girls, dropped in the hurried mass exodus.

'The rest are gone, others are dead'

Zambian Brig-Gen Henry Anyidoho, deputy force commander of the UN mission in Rwanda (Unamir), said: "Although we were not consulted, the government has decided to close the camp. The rest are gone, others are dead, whether they like it or not the place is going to be closed. They stand a better chance of surviving by getting out of here than by staying. There are criminals among them but their main fear is the RPA, no one can rule out that."

Reports had reached him that the RPA had heavy weapons trained on the compound, and would remain in position to see the last displaced Hutu removed.

UN Australian soldiers went in to bring out the wounded on stretchers - some of them victims of the RPA's forcible attempts to rout them, others of violence that broke out among the captive crowd. "It's the worst thing I've ever seen," one of the Australians said as a colleague staggered across a pile of discarded belongings with a naked child in his arms, its face mashed and bloodied.

'If we go home they will slit our throats'

"Die, you cockroach, die," an RPA soldier said in English to a wounded Hutu, brought out on a stretcher. "Cockroaches" was the word given to Tutsis by extremist Hutus in the former government.

A mother with a baby strapped to her back held out a jerry can begging for water. "We're afraid. Please find us another country to go to," she pleaded. Beside her, bluebottle flies buzzed angrily over the body of a dead man. His face was battered and swollen. Inches away, a small boy spooned beans into his mouth from a blackened cooking pot.

Eight bodies, hacked and bludgeoned with machetes and clubs, lay covered with cloths and blankets outside the hospital. "Macheted and killed by their own people - they wanted to leave last night," said a UN officer, explaining that leaders were intimidating the majority from going.

Yards from the mission compound overlooked by Kebeho church, where locals say the Virgin Mary sometimes appears, UN soldiers pointed out the grave they had dug for 41 bodies. UN Zambian Lt Christopher Kayayi said some had been hacked with machetes, others shot both in the front and the back. "There are many on the road that the RPA buried in order to clear the evidence," he said.

True extent of the killings at Kibeho will now never be known

Aid officials believe many were killed along the way and their bodies disposed of. Hundreds who reached Butare, 25 miles away, were greeted at the entrance to the town by crowds of stone-throwing Tutsis.

Witnesses say two Hutus were clubbed to death in the main street in full view of the town's main hotel. A number of others were arrested on suspicion of being responsible for killings last year. Some had been denounced by Tutsis who came forward and accused them of killing members of their family.

Yesterday, Tutsi officials and RPA soldiers were finishing vetting 7,000 Hutus transported from Kibeho on UN lorries to Butare stadium. Sally Brown of the British medical charity Merlin said more than 500 seriously injured people had been treated, many with fresh wounds sustained on their journey from Kibeho to Butare.

According to UN officials, the 7,000, only a fraction of the camp's 120,000 population, were being transported under UN protection back to their home villages. But the officials privately expressed doubt that they would receive much of a welcome there.

Many houses vacated by fleeing Hutus last year have been taken over by Tutsi refugees returning from outside Rwanda. Brig-Gen Anyidoho said: "It's now the government's responsibility to ensure the homes they are going to are actually there."

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