Abstract
- In New York, the United Nations Security Council postponed until next week a possible decision on the reinforcement of the Blue Helmets mission in Rwanda. While the diplomats quibble and prevaricate, the massacres continue and take on a frightening dimension.
- Fights, massacres, exodus continue in Rwanda with assessments which are egrained day by day in all their horror. We are no longer talking about 200,000 dead in this civil war which has torn this small country apart since the disappearance on April 6 of President Habyarimana, but of 500,000 victims, mainly Tutsis from the minority ethnic group.
- Humanitarian organizations in Kigali believe that these figures are only provisional and that the real toll will probably never be known. Another revelation from Doctors Without Borders: since mid-April, nearly a hundred people belonging to the Rwandan staff of this organization, nurses, doctors or drivers, have reportedly been executed most often with knives at the inside these refugee camps, hospitals or dispensaries.
- In terms of fighting, mortar fire continued throughout the day yesterday [May 13] in several districts of Kigali, particularly on the road leading to the airport. The shelling did not spare the Hôtel des Mille Collines and the stadium in the Rwandan capital where several thousand Tutsi are said to have taken refuge. France has asked the United Nations to strengthen the security of these refugees by the Blue Helmets.
- Former French Minister of Health and Humanitarian Action, Bernard Kouchner, met in Kigali with the leader of the RPF rebels and is expected to make contact today with the leaders of the armed forces to study the possibilities of leaving the country. humanitarian impasse in which Rwanda finds itself.