THE main rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday denied reports from a Rome-based missionary news agency that its forces took part in an alleged massacre of around 300 civilians. Misna, the news agency, “has always falsely accused the Congolese Rally for Democracy. There was no massacre,” the movement’s military leader and first vice president, Jean Pierre Ondekane said. Misna said on Saturday that hundreds of people, including children and the elderly, were shot or knifed to death in a slaughter lasting almost 10 hours on March 14-15. The bodies of many of the victims were said to have been thrown into a river, it said. “There are barely 50 people in Katoga. How could we kill 300?” asked RCD spokesman Kin Key Mouloumba, when contacted by phone from Goma, a RCD-held town in eastern DRC.