KIGALI | Thursday
RWANDAN Hutu rebels have suffered major losses in the bloodiest outbreak of fighting the country has seen for years, losing 150 men in a clash with government troops, according to the army.
The Rwandan army said it had killed at least 150 Hutu extremist rebels on Wednesday as they tried to enter Rwanda from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through the northwest region of Gisenyi.
The fierce fighting raised the spectre of renewed violence and terror in Rwanda, scene of mass slaughter, mainly by Hutus, in 1994 which left hundreds of thousands dead.
“One hundred and fifty infiltrators were killed, including a superior officer who was second-in-command of an Interahamwe brigade, and 24 others were taken prisoner,” army representative Colonel Jean-Bosco Kazura said.
Some 2_000 Rwandan Hutu rebels former Rwandan Hutu soldiers and allied Interahamwe militia have massed in DRC on the Rwandan border in recent days with the aim of pushing their rebellion back into Rwanda, according to Kuzra.
The rebels -emdash- who are former Rwandan Hutu soldiers and allied Interahamwe militia have moved into the lush Virungu wildlife reserve, straddling the border between the DRC and Rwanda.
Their encroachment toward Rwanda in such high numbers comes after international calls for DRC’s new president, Joseph Kabila, to bust up rear bases in the DRC that Hutu extremists from both Rwanda and Burundi have long used to keep their bloody insurgency alive.
The former Rwandan Hutu soldiers and Interahamwe were the driving forces behind an orchestrated, four-month killing campaign in Rwanda that left up to 800_000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead seven years ago.
Since 1998, the Rwandan and Burundian Hutu rebels have fought alongside the DRC army in a tangled war against rebels backed up by Rwanda and Uganda.
With a ceasefire in the DRC now holding, and Kabila ostensibly declaring them unwanted in the DRC, the extremists are thought to have set their sights on home.
Their movement in the direction of Rwanda and Burundi has sparked fears that as one war dies down, others may spring up.
Colonel Kazura said that locals had raised the alarm about the Hutus crossing the border.
“Yesterday evening local residents informed us that a column of Interahamwes was attempting to infiltrate the Cyanzarwe district,” said
“We prepared an operation and we caught them in a trap,” Kazura said, adding that the combat had lasted nearly three hours.
Before Wednesday’s fighting, the army had killed nearly 100 rebels in pitched battles since May 21 when they tried to invade the area.
On Tuesday, the Rwandan military said its troops killed 12 rebels who had killed and eaten a mountain gorilla in the wildlife reserve a primeval forest with thick vegetation which is home to a few hundred endangered gorillas. – AFP
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