Rosamund Carr, born in US, living in Rwanda since 1955.
Subj: Tutsi Massacre Sparks New Violence
Date: 97-08-23 16:49:10 EDT
From: AOL News
BCC: Pat Noble
.c The Associated Press
By DIANNA CAHN
MUDENDE CAMP, Rwanda - The family of six lay together on a mat
in what had been a refugee tent. All were dead - apparently killed
in their sleep. The face of one teen-age son had been mutilated by
a machete.
Witnesses said Saturday that 118 people were killed and 87
wounded in the attack early Friday on the camp for Tutsi refugees
who had fled the former Zaire last year. They blamed Hutu
insurgents.
Military officials said local Hutus, who form the majority in
the region and the country, also participated in the attack.
The massacre at this camp near the border with Congo - formerly
Zaire - is the worst single attack by Hutu rebels since they
launched an attempt to regain their homeland in 1995.
``I heard the enemy say during the attack that they will come
again to kill people,'' said Boniface Havugimana, a refugee from
Rutshuru across the border in Congo. His brother was wounded in the
attack.
The Hutu attacks, the counter-attacks by the predominately Tutsi
army and the growing involvement of civilians on both sides of this
undeclared war show the cycle of violence that has plagued Rwanda
for four decades.
Armed with assault rifles, machetes and clubs, the attackers
raided Mudende camp early Friday under cover of darkness, torching
tents made of plastic sheeting and opening fire on refugees
sleeping inside, witnesses and the army said.
Three large tents housing six families each were burned with the
occupants inside. Other victims were hacked or shot to death.
Several survivors among the 8,000 refugees in the camp near the
town of Gisenyi said the attackers were singing as they arrived.
Enraged Tutsis were reported to have set fire to Hutu homes in
retaliation for Friday's attack, and some Hutus were said to have
been killed.
By Saturday, most of the Hutus had disappeared from the area.
Rosamund Carr, an American resident of the area for 42 years,
said one of her Hutu employees said he had seen ``many'' dead Hutu
neighbors on the road on his way to work.
Carr said she was awakened by the shooting Friday morning, which
continued for several hours. Her flower plantation and orphanage
are just miles from the camp.
She said she saw fires burning Hutu huts around her home all day
Friday.
``What people around us say is that they were burned by civilian
Tutsis - obviously to me, in retaliation for the people killed in
Mudende,'' she said Saturday.
The Rwandan army has denied charges that it abuses Hutu
civilians in its campaign to destroy the Hutu insurgency.
The refugees at Mudende camp had fled attacks by exiled Hutu
soldiers and militiamen who were living in refugee camps just
inside the former Zaire. The Tutsis had been living in the Masisi
region for more than a century.
After a Hutu government-orchestrated slaughter in 1994 in which
at least 500,000 minority Tutsis were butchered, hundreds of
thousands of Rwanadan Hutus, including soldiers and militiamen,
fled to Congo.
Congo's Masisi region is still highly volatile and serves as a
staging ground for rebels attacking both Rwanda and Uganda.
Col. Kayumba Nyamwasa, in charge of military operations in
northwestern Rwanda, said the attackers included several local
Hutus employed by the private aid agencies who ran the camp for the
U.N. refugee agency.
He said the Hutus had probably taken part in the 1994 genocide
and blamed the aid agencies for not carefully screening their
employees.
Officials of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees toured the
Mudende camp Saturday but refused immediate comment.
They were joined by Congo's National Reconstruction Minister
Etienne Mbaya, who has been trying to arrange for the Masisi
refugees to return home. Mbaya called Friday's attack a tragedy and
said he had warned the agencies that such a slaughter was likely.
``The whole region is like a volcano,'' he said. ``We have come
to study the situation in the whole region.''
Kayumba said three soldiers and 12 attackers were killed, and
the army was continuing operations Saturday to flush out the
insurgents, whose intent was to kill, not to fight.
``They think they are going to come back here and complete the
genocide,'' he said as he made plans to block them.