Human remains were discovered this week in two mass graves near Rutshuru in the eastern province of Nord-Kivu, where three similar graves were uncovered in September, a Congolese army officer said on Thursday.
”We found two new graves in the Rutshuru area, using information from local people,” the commander of the Fifth Brigade, Colonel Jean-Marie Shekasikila, told Agence France Presse (AFP).
One of the graves is at Mugogo and the other at Bunagana, both close to Rutshuru, which is around 50km north of Goma, the provincial capital.
The colonel’s brigade found the first three graves in mid-September, soon after deploying to Rutshuru. His soldiers have since exhumed dozens of human skulls, bones and body tissue.
”We dug and discovered human remains, as we did with the earlier graves. Locals say they are the victims of 1996 massacres, when the AFDL [Rwandan-backed rebels] arrived in Rutshuru,” Shekasikila said.
Following the Rwandan genocide, in which about 800 000 people were killed, most of them Tutsis, thousands of Hutus fled over the border into the DRC for fear of reprisals from the new Tutsi-led authorities in Kigali.
At the same time, Hutu extremists who took part in the genocide crossed the border to set up rear bases in the DRC. Rwandan troops made several incursions into Congolese territory, ostensibly to root out the Hutu militias.
According to evidence gathered by Agence France Presse from survivors of the and victims’ families, thousands of Congolese Hutus were killed in 1996 by Tutsi militias — both Congolese and Rwandan — who belonged to the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo (AFDL).
The AFDL rebel movement, backed by Rwanda and led by Laurent-Desire Kabila, took control of the Rutshuru area in late October 1996 and would take power in Kinshasa seven months later.
All the testimony heard by AFP refers to two large massacres in the Rutshuru region on October 30 and November 18 1996.
One survivor of Mugogo said he had seen hundreds of villagers surrounded in the marketplace on Monday November 18, forced to lie ”face down” on the ground before being killed by soldiers.
”The soldiers used hoes. When people understood what was happening they started to run away and were shot dead with rifles,” the survivor said.
”I fled towards Uganda (around 20km, to the northeast). I came back on the Wednesday and saw the marketplace full of bodies, hundreds of bodies, which had not yet been taken away,” he added.
Colonel Shekasikila, who says he receives local people’s ”testimonies almost every day”, believes ”many more graves will be discovered”.
The UN mission to the DR Congo (Monuc) opened an inquiry after the discovery of the earlier mass graves, but the Congolese authorities have so far not launched an investigation. – Sapa-AFP