Hutus Tribe

Congo has suspended Tutsi-led military operations against Rwandan Hutu rebels in an effort to avoid further ethnic tension in the country's east, a senior army official said Saturday. At least 165,000 civilians have fled fighting in North Kivu province since February, when army brigades commanded by Tutsis began operations to drive out Rwandan rebels. Congo's ground commander Gen. Gabriel Amisi told journalists in North Kivu that the decision was made after consultation with the U.N.

Rwanda's main Hutu rebel group said it was ending its war against Rwanda, and for the first time it denounced the 1994 genocide of Tutsis for which many of its members have been blamed. A delegation representing the rebel organization, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, made the announcement after secret negotiations at the Sant'Egidio religious community in Rome.

The sight of a mob murdering his father has given Naphtal Ahishakiye no peace these last 11 years. It was May 28, 1994, one crime among millions during Rwanda's genocide. Helpless and hidden in a tree, he watched the mob stuff his father headfirst down a latrine. But the long wait for justice has ended in disappointment. At a recent community hearing, witnesses identified the killers as militia members who had fled Rwanda after the genocide and were beyond the reach of the law.

Burundi's president signed a truce with the Hutu rebels, boosting efforts to end the tiny African country's decade-long civil war, witnesses said. President Domitien Ndayizeye and Agathon Rwasa, leader of the Hutu Forces for National Liberation, signed the cessation of hostilities pact after their first face-to-face talks in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Burundi is emerging from 12 years of war between majority Hutus against the politically dominant Tutsi minority.

Nearly 10 years after the Rwandan genocide, a Hollywood studio is planning a film, touted as a love story and political thriller about the massacres. The aim, says director Terry George, is to reproach the world for its failure to stop the 1994 Hutu genocide of 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis, in 100 days. Moderate Hutus who refused to take part were also slaughtered. "I'm particularly determined to shame everybody in the audience if I possibly can," George said Friday.

Rwandan troops, going on the offensive against Hutu fighters involved in the nation's 1994 genocide, entered Burundi briefly to hunt rebels hiding in forests there, officials of both nations said. Burundi's army chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Germain Niyoyankana, said at a news conference Saturday that Rwanda had been massing troops defensively for some time on its borders with Burundi and Congo to prevent expected attacks by Hutu Interahamwe militia fighters based in Congo.

In her heart, Eugenie Muhayimana didn't become a mother at the birth of her son. Yearning only for death, she could find no shred of love for the babe born of nearly three months of daily gang rape in 1994 by a band of genocidal killers. Her first revelation of motherhood came a little later: Janvier Turahirwa, the Hutu militiaman who had enslaved her, looked at the baby boy and said the child did not look Hutu. Kill it, he ordered her.

Attackers with machetes and automatic weapons raided a U.N. refugee camp in western Burundi late Friday, hacking and shooting to death about 190 men, women and children, U.N. officials said. Burundian Hutu rebels claimed responsibility, insisting that the camp for Congolese Tutsi refugees fleeing tribal fighting was a hide-out for Burundian soldiers and Congolese tribal militiamen. But most of the victims appeared to be women and children.

Survivors of a massacre at a U.N.-run refugee camp buried 163 Congolese Tutsis in a dusty cotton field Monday, some fainting in the hot sun as the simple wooden coffins were lowered into a mass grave. Some of them wept as others told of narrow escapes as Hutu marauders rampaged through the Gatumba camp, screaming that they would kill any Tutsi they found.

Investigators have linked a recent massacre at a Burundian refugee camp to Hutu rebels operating with armed groups from Rwanda and Congo, according to a preliminary U.N. report. Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently cited reports that the Burundian rebel National Liberation Force, which has claimed responsibility for the Aug. 13 massacre, operated in alliance with Congolese tribal fighters known as Mai Mai, and Rwandan Hutu rebels.