Rwanda looks for health and hope - or something
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Your support makes all the difference.THE United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (Unamir) is desperately trying to persuade Hutus fleeing from the victorious Tutsi- led Rwandese Patriotic Front to return to their homes. The British UN contingent, from 5th Airborne Brigade based in Aldershot, is crucial to the UN plan.
The British force, which will be more than 600 strong when complete, includes engineers to get water supplies working and medical staff to care for returning refugees and local people who remained during the fighting which has cost up to a million lives. The medical centre manned by 23 Parachute Field Ambulance at Ruhengeri, once the third largest hospital in Rwanda, is now 85 strong out of its planned strength of 150.
'Where I will be saving lives is not putting people's legs straight,' said Captain Paul Taylor, 26, a reserve medical officer, 'but in increasing confidence in the area that there is an infrastructure to come back to. There's crops in the fields waiting to be harvested.'
Roman Catholic missionaries sent to Rwanda to investigate the disappearance of a British member of their order have accused the new government of obstructing their investigation and said there were still unanswered questions about his disappearence. They found the burned out car and a charred body assumed to be the remains of another brother with whom he was travelling, their order said yesterday. Christopher Mannion, 43, and his fellow Marist Order brother Joseph Rushigajiki disappeared on 1 July while driving to the town of Save to evacuate other missionaries after it fell to the RPF.
The order said that some Save residents told the two investigators that Mannion had been injured and taken by the RPF to the town of Nyanza for medical treatment while 'others suggested that he might have been taken captive'.
Mr Mannion, whose family live in Darlington, County Durham, entered Rwanda on 29 June to try to win the release of two ethnic Tutsi members of the order who were being held by members of the predominantly Hutu former government.
Burundi on the brink, page 14
(Photograph omitted)
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