U.N. official questions massacre report from eastern Congo

Hrvoje Hranjski

Sunday, May 21, 2000 | 1:44 a.m.

KIGALI, Rwanda - Congolese rebels killed up to 31 civilians in an eastern village in retaliation for an attack by pro-government militia, a U.N. aid official said Sunday, questioning the 300 death toll reported by an Italian missionary news agency.

The MISNA news agency, quoting unidentified sources, reported Saturday that up to 300 civilians were killed May 14 - many hacked to death - when the Rwandan-backed rebels of the Congolese Rally for Democracy attacked Katogota, 35 miles south of Lake Kivu port of Bukavu.

"Nobody can confirm the figure of 300 at this time. We can confirm that an incident took place in which between seven and 31 people were killed in a process of exchange of fire between the two forces," said Charles Petrie, U.N. humanitarian aid coordinator for eastern Congo.

He cited reports from international and Congolese aid workers in Bukavu in contact with travelers and officials. He said the village in question had a population of only 50.

Rebel spokesman Kin-Kiey Mulumba insisted Saturday that there were no civilian casualties when the rebels attacked the pro-government militia in Katogota, where a rebel platoon commander had been killed in an earlier ambush.

The rebels, most of them ethnic Congolese Tutsis opposed to President Laurent Kabila, are unpopular in eastern Congo, where the war-weary population generally regard them as accomplices of their foreign backers, Rwanda and Uganda.

Mulumba invited the United Nations to join the rebels' own inquiry into the incident. Petrie said a U.N. human rights worker was on his way to Bukavu to investigate.