US warns on Rwandan park
2004-04-15 09:44
Washington - The United States has barred US diplomats from a famed Rwandan mountain gorilla refuge and warned Americans to avoid the area after an attack on government troops by Hutu rebels there last week, the State Department said Wednesday.
The US embassy in Kigali imposed the ban on visits to the Virunga National Park and the nearby area of Mutura in Rwanda's northwest Gisenyi Province after Thursday's rebel attack and subsequent fighting killed 16 people, it said.
"As a result, American embassy personnel are currently restricted from traveling in these areas," the embassy said in a notice to US citizens in Rwanda, according to a copy provided by the State Department.
"US citizens should avoid travel to the Parc National des Volcans (Virunga National Park) and the Mutura area," it said, adding that the new policy would be reviewed in two week's time.
The Rwandan army announced on Saturday that its troops had killed 16 rebels from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda in fighting that followed the initial attack.
It army said it had suffered no losses and that there had been no civilian casualties in the attack that took place as Rwanda was marking the 10th anniversary of the 1994 genocide, when up to a million people, mostly from the Tutsi minority, were killed in a campaign planned by the then Hutu-led regime.
In January, conservationists said they had seen a surprising upturn in numbers of mountain gorillas, one of the world's rarest species of mammal, in central Africa's Virunga Highlands, which encompasses the park in Rwanda.
They said they had seen a 17% rise in the number of gorillas, to 380, since the last extensive estimate was carried out in 1989, before the region was gripped by warfare for much of the 1990s, unleashing floods of refugees who encroached on the animals' habitat.
That announcement had been expected to result in an increase in the number of tourists visiting the area.