High alert at UK Rwandan embassy

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High alert at UK Rwandan embassy

[Source: BBC] Security has been stepped at the Rwandan Embassy in London, UK, after an attempt to set the building on fire.

Police were called to the scene by an embassy staff member who lives in the building and noticed petrol fumes.

The attack on Sunday night comes a few weeks before a ruling is expected on the extradition of four Rwandan genocide suspects from the UK.

"This is unacceptable - it shows Rwanda's enemies are still at large," Ambassador Claver Gatete told the BBC.

Police officers are examining footage from surveillance cameras around the embassy.

In April, the Rwandan cultural centre in Belgium was also attacked.

Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in just 100 days during the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

'Campaign'

Mr Gatete, Rwanda's ambassador to London, said that unknown people broke one of the embassy's windows and poured petrol inside.

He said he suspected that the attack could be part of an ongoing campaign by exiled Rwandan Hutus.

The government in Kigali says many perpetrators of the 1994 genocide have fled to various European capitals, and live under assumed names.

"We do not know exactly who is behind it, but we can see the chronology of events," Mr Gatete told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

"These are the perpetrators of genocide; these are the people who do not want these defendants to be extradited to Rwanda."

The extradition case against the four suspects - three former mayors and a medical doctor - is being heard by a magistrates' court in London.

A ruling is expected on 6 June.

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