Minister warns of major Hutu rebel offensive

Rwandan Defence Minister Colonel Emmanuel Habyarimana said on Thursday that tens of thousands of ex-Forces armees rwandaises (ex-FAR) troops and Hutu rebels, aligned in the Armée pour la Liberation du Rwanda (ALIR), were marching from bases in the DRC for a major offensive on Rwanda, news organisations reported. At a press conference on security matters in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, Habyarimana said that the Rwandan army had previously thought the number of ex-FAR to be in the region of 40,000 but that it now had “reliable information” that Interahamwe militia members had swelled their ranks to about 100,000, the BBC Kirundi/Kinyarwanda service reported. Rebels had already gathered and started marching towards Rwanda from bases in Kabalo and Kamina [in Katanga Province, southwestern DRC], he claimed. “We are waiting for them. We have the capacity to prevent them from causing insecurity inside Rwanda,” Reuters news agency quoted Habyarimana as saying. The latest rebel drive was many times larger and better equipped than a previous effort in mid-May, during which Rwanda witnessed some of the fiercest fighting in years, according to the minister. He said Rwandan forces had recently driven back an advance party seeking to open a second front on Rwanda’s southwestern border with Congo, Reuters added.