On This Day: How RPA captured Mt Rebero and what it meant

Rebero is one of the three imposing mountain peaks in and around Kigali, a strategic site in the battle of the capital 28 years ago. When the Genocide against the Tutsi was set in motion on April 7, 1994, then government forces, or FAR, used their heavily fortified base on Mt Rebero to shell the Conseil National de Développement, best known as CND (present-day Parliamentary Buildings), which housed Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) politicians and their relatively small protection force of 600 soldiers. The politicians had arrived in Kigali in December 1993 under the Arusha Peace Accords between the RPF and the Juvénal Habyarimana government and had been expected to join an inclusive transitional national government and parliament. After months of dillydallying on the part of Habyarimanas camp, the president was assassinated when his Falcon 50 was shot down over Kigali and radicals within his inner circle – blamed for the deadly attack – quickly started a premeditated genocide targeting the Tutsi. Soon after, once it became clear that a military junta had taken over and immediately begun killing the Tutsi as well as key opposition figures, then RPA Chairman of High Command, Gen Paul Kagame, ordered his troops to go on the offensive with a view to engage and defeat the enemy, rescue Genocide victims, and restore peace. But he needed to first rescue his ‘600’ troops and the RPF politicians trapped at CND. Aside from ordering the 3rd battalion to break out of their base in Kigali and counterattack and save victims in their vicinity, Kagame also dispatched a 2000-strong reinforcement force to the capital who would link up with the ‘600’ four days later. “They would have converged on them if we delayed,” recalled Gen (rtd) Sam Kanyemera Kaka, who was the commander of Alpha, one of the two Combined Mobile Forces – along with the 59th, under Col. Charles Ngonga (RIP) – deployed to reinforce the 3rd Battalion. Offensive after ‘link-up’ When the reinforcements arrived and CND – which was by now teeming with casualties, including heavily wounded civilians – secured, Gen Kagame ordered the liberation forces to advance and particularly launch an offensive on Mt Rebero. “We had to go on the offensive after the link-up,” said Gen Charles Karamba, who was the head of intelligence for the 3rd Battalion, in the highly-acclaimed movie, The 600. The 3rd Battalion was under the command of Gen Charles Kayonga, then a Lieutenant Colonel. Rebero was a highly strategic feature for the RPA as it afforded the enemy a vantage point from which they could target and hit any location around Kigali, said Col. (rtd) Jacob Tumwine, who commanded the RPA force that attacked Rebero on April 12, 1994. And, for the RPA, who had days earlier dislodged FAR from areas around the Amahoro National Stadium and rescued some 5000 people in and around the sports arena, capturing Rebero would mark a major turning point in the campaign against the Genocide. “Should we be able to secure that, we’ll have punched a hole in the enemy defences,” said Gen Karamba, currently Rwanda’s envoy to Tanzania, with hindsight. ‘They were chopping people’ But there was a catch. “The biggest challenge was arriving there, because in-between the Parliamentary Building (CND) and Mt Rebero, first of all, the distance is long (about 10km), and second, government forces and auxiliary forces (government-backed militia) were littered all over the place…it was a bad site,” he says. To further complicate the situation, the RPA were at the same time involved in rescue operations. Grisly images of bleeding children being rescued by RPA soldiers still evoke strong emotions to this day. “They were chopping people, children and babies…those people were like beasts…my heart broke,” reflected Captain (rtd) Daphrosa Intaramirwa, a liberator recognised by many from her heartwarming photo taken during those dark days. In the image, on display inside the ‘CND’-based Campaign Against Genocide Museum, Intaramirwa is holding a baby. Scenes of massacres and hacked victims fighting for dear life on the streets, at churches or school compounds were commonplace for advancing RPA liberation forces and it was no different for the units on their way to Rebero. “We have an enemy to go and engage and people who want our support, we can’t leave them there,” said Tumwine. “…we needed manpower but we also needed to save the lives of those being killed.” At one point, they came across terrified victims who begged them for protection. “I said, ‘okay, let me leave somebody behind. So I left a platoon behind, with a capable officer…I kept reducing our number.” The attack on Rebero was mounted by troops from Simba and Eagle companies of the 3rd Battalion. On their way to Rebero, on April 11, the RPA units were confronted by a horrific scene of more than 5000 civilians who had just been massacred by ex-FAR and Interahamwe militia in and around the Nyanza-Kicukiro area. They had been slaughtered just hours after UN Belgian troops that initially protected them at then ETO Don Bosco Kicukiro, a technical school, withdrew without prior warning. Some victims were close relatives of some RPA soldiers. “Most of the (RPA) soldiers knew the people here and had families here, it was very, very tragic for them because they thought they came to save their people, their own, and now seeing them dead…it was very, very hurtful,” recounted Philbert Rwigamba, a retired former RPA officer, for The 600 documentary. “What was taking place certainly was taking a toll on our fighting troops,” observed Karamba. Attacked from rear Nonetheless, the Rebero-bound units soldiered on, their eyes firmly set on the military base atop and what capturing it could mean. “Our forces were able to move throughout the night until dawn (on April 12) undetected and attacked the Rebero defence from behind,” said Karamba. They were under orders to bypass the military barracks and attack from the rear. After two hours of intense fighting, government forces lost the battle for Rebero and fled. It was one of the fiercest battles in the capital, recalled one former RPA soldier who took part in the attack. “It was extremely difficult and understandably so because they were up, above us, and it was easy for them to shoot at us.” The fall of Rebero turned the fortunes in favour of the RPA, according to Medard Bashana, Manager of the Campaign Against Genocide Museum. “It allowed the RPA to create a safer corridor zone through which it could conduct multiple rescue operations in the southern parts of the capital,” he said. It also gave the RPA a strategic position from which it could target FAR positions around Kigali, notably Camp Kigali, Camp Kanombe and Mt Kigali, he added. Genocidal government abandons Kigali Overrunning one of Kigali’s most important high grounds did not only see RPA seize badly-needed arms but it also gave them an upper hand in subsequent battles for other strategic sites around Kigali. One of them was Camp Kigali, a major source of heavy artillery that had been bombarding CND nonstop. Indeed, once Rebero fell, government forces subsequently pulled out of Camp Kigali “because they couldn’t stay there when we were in Rebero,” recalled Kaka. It was also on the same day, April 12, that the interim government led by Dr Théodore Sindikubwabo, which had been installed by the military junta on April 9, abandoned the capital Kigali, relocating to Gitarama. Military analysts point at the RPA’s capture of Rebero as a major factor behind this decision. FAR would later try to retake Rebero but in vain. “They wanted to dislodge us from there but they couldn’t because the RPA were committed,” said Kaka. In our next episodes we’ll take a look at other key battles and some of the most daring operations by the RPA forces in a three-month campaign to stop the Genocide against the Tutsi and liberate Rwanda.

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On This Day: How RPA captured Mt Rebero and what it meant