Gunfire crackled Monday through the bloodsoaked Rwandan capital of Kigali, in the heaviest and most savage fighting to date in the East African nation.
"You could look across a valley and see people, especially women, being hauled out of houses and being beaten to death on the road," London Guardian reporter Mark Huband said from Kigali.
As foreigners sought escape from the ethnic warfare that has left an estimated 20,000 dead, U.N. efforts to broker a cease-fire between the rebels and the army failed again.
Rebel troops and government forces exchanged mortar and machine gun fire.
Armed men, many drunk, manned checkpoints and went house-to-house in Kigali, looking for victims.
The bloodshed that began last week is a grisly outgrowth of a decades-long feud between majority Hutu and minority Tutsi. The violence, which erupted after the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi died in a plane crash Wednesday, has ruined a fragile peace between the Hutu-led government and the Tutsi-led rebels.
The two were returning from a summit in Tanzania aimed at ending the feud.
News reports said gangs bayonetted 100 bed-ridden Kigali hospital patients to death as nurses watched helplessly. The stench from thousands of rotting corpses filled Kigali's air.
French and Belgian paratroopers - Belgium once administered Rwanda - seized Kigali airport to help evacuate their nationals.
Nearly all 258 U.S. citizens known to live in Rwanda, mostly missionaries and aid workers, have been evacuated to neighboring Burundi, says State Department spokesman Mike McCurry; 330 U.S. Marines were sent to Burundi to help protect them.
Also Monday:
-- There was concern over the fate of 321 gorillas, among the world's last, in Rwanda. They were featured in the hit film Gorillas in the Mist.
Western veterinarians who care for the mountain gorillas left because of the violence, leaving the endangered animals at the mercy of poachers.
"The gorillas are in grave danger," says U.S. researcher Amy Bevis, who fled to Kenya.
-- Spanish nuns told of gang killings in Kibuye, a town 50 miles west of Kigali.
An unidentified nun spoke by phone to Spanish national radio, monitored by the British Broadcasting Corp.
The nun said the parish priest was giving the nuns general absolution as gunmen slaughtered refugees in the parish church and town hall.
The nuns and the priest expected to be killed next.
