Killing of civilians confirmed in Rusabagi, South Kivu Province

Burundian rebels of the Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) killed at least a dozen people in late August in Rusabagi, 85 km south of Bukavu in South Kivu Province of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), provincial Vice-Governor Jean-Pierre Mazangi told IRIN on Thursday. The Bukavu-based human rights NGO, Heritiers de la Justice, had earlier reported the raid. Mazangi said 13 people, mainly women and children, were killed during the 24 August attack. However, Heritiers de la Justice reported that the rebels slew 19 people with rudimentary weapons, among them a one-month-old baby and a man 70 years old. It said nine other people were severely wounded. "The assailants used crude weapons, including garden hoes, machetes, knives and axes," the human rights group stated. It claimed that the local military authority, the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) former rebel movement, now a part of a unified national government and military, reacted by firing shots in the air. The NGO also accused RCD-Goma of having committed repeated violations of human rights in the village of Swimi, near the town of Fizi, including murder and pillage, in the pursuit of members of the Mayi-Mayi militias. However, Mazangi denied these allegations. "It was only with the intervention of our forces [RCD-Goma] that those who had been seriously wounded could be saved," he said. He added that repeated attacks by armed elements from neighbouring Burundi had stopped the return of Congolese refugees from Burundi that had been underway. "We are holding talks with Burundian authorities so that they might allow these militants to return to Burundi, thereby allowing the return of Congolese refugees to continue," Mazangi said.