{"id":353830,"date":"2010-02-23T01:56:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T06:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16711557.post-819907166993080789"},"modified":"2010-02-23T01:56:35","modified_gmt":"2010-02-23T06:56:35","slug":"grenade-attacks-rock-rwanda-capital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/353830","title":{"rendered":"Grenade Attacks Rock Rwanda Capital"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rwandan women welcome back the RPA from its joints mission with the FARDC in the eastern DRC aimed at the FDLR rebels.<\/a>
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n

Saturday, February 20, 2010
17:59 Mecca time, 14:59 GMT \t <\/p>\n

Grenade attacks rock Rwanda capital<\/p>\n

Three simultaneous grenade attacks on public places in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, have left one person dead and another 18 wounded, national public radio has reported.<\/p>\n

Five of the injured were in a serious condition following Friday’s attacks on a train station, a restaurant and a building housing city centre businesses.<\/p>\n

“Two suspects were apprehended, they belong to the Interahamwe militia,” Eric Kayiranga, a police spokesman, told AFP, referring to the extremist Hutu militia responsible for Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.<\/p>\n

“Those who commit these kinds of crimes want to sow chaos, intimidate people and kill the genocide survivors,” Kayiranga said.<\/p>\n

“We are continuing the investigation and questioning the two suspects,” notably on whether any link exists between the blasts and the August presidential election, he said.<\/p>\n

‘Political harassment’<\/p>\n

Rwanda is due to hold a presidential vote in August in which Paul Kagame, the country’s president, is widely expected to seek and secure re-election.<\/p>\n

Kagame, who heads a Tutsi-led government, has been in power since the end of the genocide in 1994.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) condemned the harassment of political opposition figures in Rwanda, saying they faced increasing “threats, attacks and harassment” ahead of the poll.<\/p>\n

The group cited an incident in which Joseph Ntawangundi – a member of the FDU-Inkingi, a new opposition party critical of government policies – was attacked in front of a local government office.<\/p>\n

“The attack appeared to have been well co-ordinated, suggesting it had been planned in advance,” HRW said.<\/p>\n

Ntawangundi has since been jailed after being sentenced in absentia in 2007 to 19 years by a court set up to try the perpetrators of the genocide.<\/p>\n

Sarkozy visit<\/p>\n

The attacks come just days before a visit by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, to Rwanda, aimed to cement newly renewed diplomatic ties between Paris and Kigali after years of mutual recriminations over the 1994 genocide.<\/p>\n

Sarkozy’s trip next week will be the first by a French president since the massacre by extremist Hutus of around 800,000 people in Rwanda, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus. A new French ambassador to Kigali was accredited in January.<\/p>\n

The two countries announced in November the resumption of relations severed in 2006 after a French judge issued warrants against President Kagame’s top aides on suspicion of being behind the death of a Rwandan ex-president.<\/p>\n

For its part, Kigali alleged French forces had trained extremist Hutu militia which carried out the killings, a charge Paris has repeatedly denied.<\/p>\n

Source: \tAgencies
<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rwandan women welcome back the RPA from its joints mission with the FARDC in the eastern DRC aimed at the FDLR rebels.Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos Saturday, February 20, 201017:59 Mecca time, 14:59 GMT Grenade attacks rock Rwanda capital Three simultaneous grenade attacks on public places in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4243,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-353830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4243"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}