Rwandan Hutu rebels killed 25 Congolese villagers with machetes, a United Nations Mission in Congo (Monuc) official said in Kinshasa on Tuesday.
It was unclear whether the FDLR (Forces for Liberation and Defence of Rwanda) rebels or a splinter group that calls itself the Rasta militia, carried out the attack.
The FDLR is one of the foreign militias that ignored President Joseph Kabila’s September 28 deadline to leave the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Although Kinshasa indicated that it would dislodge all foreign fighters by force after the expiry date, it has not yet done so.
Currently, an estimated 10 000 Hutu rebels remain in the eastern DRC.
Many of them, suspected to have participated in the 1994 Rwanda genocide which killed about 800 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, fled to the neighbouring DRC and have been wreaking havoc in the volatile easern part of the country ever since. – Sapa-DPA