World Peace News: Top Stories

180 Congo refugees massacred in Burundi
by Jack Kahorha

Associated Press Translate This Article
14 August 2004

BUJUMBURA, Burundi (AP) - Dozens of attackers raided a U.N. refugee camp in western Burundi, shooting and hacking to death at least 180 people, witnesses and local officials said Saturday.

A Burundian Hutu rebel faction claimed responsibility for the attack late Friday near the Congolese border, saying its fighters were in pursuit of Burundian soldiers who fled to the camp from a nearby army position.

The assailants screamed war cries as they rushed into the camp and set it ablaze, local official Louis Niyonzima told The Associated Press.

The camp sheltered Congolese ethnic Tutsi refugees, known as the Banyamulenge, who fled fighting in Congo's troubled border province of South Kivu, Niyonzima said. . . .

Isabelle Abric, spokeswoman for the U.N. mission in Burundi, said 159 people were killed on the spot and 101 others were wounded in the attack on the camp in Gatumba, 12 miles from the Congolese border. At least 30 of the wounded died later in hospital, she said.

The bloodshed in the camp came after gunmen attacked a Burundian army position about a half-mile away. . . .

Pasteur Habimana, spokesman for the National Liberation Forces, justified the assault on the camp by saying Burundian soldiers were hiding there after the attack on the post.

``We were also attacked by armed Banyamulenge militiamen who lived in this camp,'' he said. ``The camp was a genuine Banyamulenge militiamen headquarters.''

Habimana earlier said the victims were killed by Burundian soldiers who fled into the refugee camp to escape the rebel assault.

A spokesman for the Burundian army could not be immediately reached for comment.

The National Liberation Forces is the last main rebel movement fighting the government in Burundi's 10-year-old civil war, which has killed some 260,000 people.

War broke out in 1993, when Hutus took up arms after Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country's first democratically elected president, a Hutu. Burundi's Tutsi minority has effectively run the country for all but a few months since independence in 1962.

Burundian President Domitien Ndayizeye visited the camp Saturday and described the massacre as ``a shame'' and asked the Congolese government to assist in investigations.

``What I can say is that it is Burundi which has been attacked. The attackers killed innocent refugees who sought refuge in Burundi,'' Ndayizeye said. The rebels ``declared that they attacked a military camp and that the soldiers fled in this camp but I saw no soldier's body except those of young children, women and old persons.''

The attack occurred one day after Congolese Vice President Azarias Ruberwa visited the camp to encourage the refugees to return home.

In the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, government officials were heading into meetings Saturday to discuss the killings. They had no immediate comment.

United Nations officials are studying whether the attack was carried out with the assistance of Congolese tribal fighters known as the Mayi Mayi or Rwandan rebels based in eastern Congo, she said.

The Rwandan insurgents include members of the former army and the extremists Interahamwe militia who fled to Congo after playing a key role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

More than 500,000 minority Tutsis and political moderates from the Hutu majority were killed in the 100-day slaughter organized by the extremist Hutu government then in power.

A renegade Congolese army commander—whose troops briefly seized Bukavu in June over complaints that Banyamulenge kinsmen were targeted by Congolese authorities —said the attack in Burundi proved his charges. But he stopped short of threatening retaliation.

Renegade Brig. Gen. Laurent Nkunda, accused the Congolese army of letting attackers of the Burundi operate in its zone unchallenged.

``This event proves me right,'' Nkunda said by telephone. ``This confirms that there's an extermination plan against the Banyamulenge.''

Rwandan President Paul Kagame, speaking in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, said the massacre ``proves what we have been saying over time, that there have been incidents that are ignored by the international community and the U.N. where people are being killed in eastern Congo, being targeted for who they are.''

The massacre will further complicate U.N. efforts to encourage Congolese refugees to return home, said M'Hand Ladjouzi, head of the U.N. mission in Congo's troubled North Kivu province.

``This is a setback in our efforts to ensure security here,'' Ladjouzi said. ``We are trying to find out who did this. Their aim is to complicate the situation. Obviously, they did this to stop all the efforts the international community is making.''

Copyright © 2000 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Translation software is not perfect; however if you would like to try it, you can translate this page using:

(Google)
(Altavista babelfish)