Streets of Slaughter

By MARGUERITE MICHAELS

Thirty minutes before dawn last Wednesday, Hutu members of the presidential guard kicked in the door of a church just east of Rwanda's capital city of Kigali. Instantly, they opened fire with semiautomatic weapons and tossed in grenades. Then, according to Belgian news reports, they set upon the Tutsi parishioners who were still alive with knives, bats and spears. Almost 1,200 civilians were massacred, more than half of them children.

As the tribal carnage entered a second week in the tiny central African country, the streets of Kigali were the domain of marauding bands of men hacking down women and children on sight. Severed heads and limbs piled up on street corners, the smell of decay fouling the air. No matter how many bodies Red Cross workers collected, more appeared. Boys carrying hand grenades threatened passing cars, while drunken soldiers at makeshift barricades terrorized civilians scurrying by. In a city without electricity or water, the foolish few who ventured out into the streets to forage for food were too traumatized to eat after passing rows of mutilated bodies lying in pools of blood. "Hundreds of thousands are cut off from anything decent or human," said U.N. spokesman Moctar Gueye. "People are starving to death in their own houses. Hospitals are not functioning."

Rwandans packed into Kigali's hotels, huddling in the dark hallways without food or beds, hoping the few foreigners there would protect them. Their terror only increased as the foreigners slipped away. At a hilltop compound for the insane, a group of Belgian nuns and lay brothers abandoned 200 of their patients in a desperate rush to escape. For days the clinic had been surrounded by bands of machete-armed Hutu men. The foreigners had little doubt about the future of their patients or the 500 Tutsis who had come for refuge $ from the fighting outside. "They're finished," said hospital administrator Gerard Van Selst as he boarded an armored Belgian convoy. "A huge number will be killed." One American sheltered a fugitive opposition politician and helped him to safety. But there were too many others he could not help. "I saw scenes that will haunt me for the rest of my life," he said. "Bodies. Piles of bodies, women and children. Just piles of them."

The numbing stacks of corpses were the grisly hallmark of a horrifyingly intimate style of slaughter, literal hand-to-hand combat. The predominantly Tutsi forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the Hutu-dominated army and presidential guard battled each other with mortars, machine guns and hand grenades. But what kept people shuddering in the darkest corners of their homes were the machete-armed gangs of Hutu men on a wild killing spree, often drunk and dressed in startling fashions looted from abandoned stores and houses of the dead. Swaggering Hutu men and boys paraded through the city, loaded with weapons and cheap liquor. Many of the 20,000 victims died simply because they were Tutsis. "More and more of the civilian population armed with machetes are ruling the streets," said Philippe Gaillard, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kigali. "The army can't control them."

The bloodshed began after Presidents Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi, both Hutus, died when their plane crashed at Kigali airport almost two weeks ago. A military team from Belgium, the former colonial power in Rwanda, has concluded that the jet was shot down with rockets belonging to the Rwandan army -- most likely by the presidential guard angered at plans to include Tutsis in the government. The 600-strong guard began murdering all the Tutsis they could find. The army soon joined in, as much to loot as to kill.

After France, Belgium, Italy and the U.S. flew in military rescue units, most of the 2,850 terrified foreign diplomats, aid workers and missionaries were evacuated. Some wept with guilt over the fate of Rwandan friends left behind. Theresa Scimeni, an American teacher at the International School in Kigali, recalled the horror before she and her husband and two young daughters were rescued. "We heard each of the houses near us attacked in turn. There would be firing, screams, then silence," she said, safe in Nairobi. "Then a few minutes later the men would move to the next house, and it would start all over again -- and again."

The Western troops could barely manage to protect their own countrymen. A 2,400-member U.N. peacekeeping force, in Kigali to monitor a peace accord signed last year, lost 10 of its Belgian members when they tried to save the life of the Tutsi Prime Minister. Some 12,000 people were under U.N. protection at the national stadium and at the city's main hospital. But U.N. officials were worried that the lightly armed peacekeepers would not have the resources to cope. Chastened by the experience of Somalia, the U.N. Security Council is unwilling to intervene with force, and, for the most part, the troops in Kigali are confined to their barracks. Belgium is withdrawing its 400 soldiers; U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali told the Security Council last week that unless there is a cease-fire soon, he will recommend the withdrawal of all but a skeletal staff of 250 peacekeepers. "If we are just cooped up watching them pound each other, then we have to seriously assess the risk of keeping these soldiers here," said the U.N. commander, General Romeo Dallaire of Canada.

The best hope for Rwanda now seems to be the successful takeover of the country by the rebels, who have promised to end the chaos. Hundreds of rebel reinforcements were fighting their way into the capital. While guerrillas inside Kigali carried out hit-and-run attacks on government positions, thousands more bombarded the city from positions in the hills to the north. Rwandan army officers scoffed at the idea of a rebel victory in Kigali. But the Front, which claims as many men as the army -- about 20,000 -- is thought to be a better disciplined and more heavily armed fighting force. It has flatly refused a cease-fire until the presidential guard has surrendered or been liquidated. On Saturday, however, both sides allowed food and medicine to be flown into the capital.

With no place to hide, tens of thousands of refugees lined the roads in all directions, seeking a way out of the blood-soaked city; the streams of misery stretched for miles. Most were on foot, carrying meager bundles of possessions. Scores of people crowded into buses and clung to the sides of any vehicle that would attempt the twisting, mountainous roads. The wealthy raced away in luxury cars with private bodyguards, the barrels of automatic weapons jutting from every window. Danger still waited at checkpoints every mile or so, manned by demoralized and frightened Rwandan soldiers looking for loot.

The Tutsi rebels have promised not to retaliate against the Hutus and have pledged to end the slaughter. But the refugees know just how many times that promise has been made over the years by both tribes -- and then broken.

With reporting by Clive Mutiso/Nairobi