Rwanda refugees slaughtered

Brussels - Despite the massacre in which thousands of people were shot or trampled to death as soldiers tried to empty a refugee camp at the weekend, the Rwandan government is to intensify the push to close the camps.

"The camps must be emptied," Jacques Bihozagara, the Rehabilitation Minister who has responsibility for closing the camps, said. "And we're going to help Tanzania and Zaire empty camps there." He rejected UN statements that at least 5,000 were killed by government soldiers or died in stampedes when refugees tried to escape the Kibeho camp in south-west Rwanda on Saturday. "Hundreds have been killed," he said, adding many of the 125,000 inhabitants had run away. The camps, set up by French troops, once housed 250,000 people, mostly Hutus who fear reprisals by Tutsis for the massacre of 500,000 people last year.

UN estimates of Saturday's death toll varied widely yesterday. The UN special envoy, Shaharyar Khan, said the official toll was 5,000, but counting was going on and "many more were buried without UN knowledge". Major Mark MacKay, of the UN Integrated Operations Centre in Kigali, gave Reuters news agency a figure of about 8,000. But late yesterday the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda said: "After taking a more scientific count ... the figure has been revised to approximately 2,000."

A British UN soldier told Mark Radford, an Oxfam officer based at Kibeho, that he had seen at least 2,000 bodies and had watched the government's Rwanda Patriotic Army soldiers dumping dead or wounded into latrines. The soldier saw a woman shot at point-blank range after she threw her arms in the air in surrender.

Paul Lowe, a photographer, described scenes at Kibeho as "like a vision from hell". "One infant was suckling at its dead mother's breast. Young children walked through the mass of bodies crying `Papa, Mama'."

Another Oxfam worker, Andy Bastaple, said hundreds of people were yesterday on the road from Kibeho to Butare. They were extremely hungry and thirsty, and injuries ranged from machete and bullet wounds to broken limbs and hacked off ears and noses.

Corpses everywhere, page 9