U.N.: 90 dead after Hutu attack in Congo

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U.N.: 90 dead after Hutu attack in Congo

At least 60 victims were civilians; militia's reprisals get increasingly violent

KINSHASA, Congo - An attack by an ethnic Hutu militia on a village in eastern

Congo has left at least 90 people dead, a United Nations official said Thursday.

At least 60 of the victims of the attack by the Democratic Forces for the

Liberation of Rwanda were civilians, said Nestor Yombo, spokesman for the U.N.

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

He says the attack was on Saturday and Sunday in the village of Ekingi, around

900 miles northeast of Kinshasa, Congo's capital.

The Hutu militia is made-up in part of fighters from the Hutu ethnic group

accused of taking part in neighboring Rwanda's 1994 genocide against that

country's Tutsi minority.

Earlier this year, the Congolese and Rwandan armies launched a joint operation

to try to flush the Hutu militia out of the hills of eastern Congo where they

took refuge in the late 1990s — but the operation has had disastrous

consequences for civilians.

Although large numbers of Hutu fighters have turned themselves in, the remaining

members of the militia have led increasingly violent reprisal attacks against

locals.

Despite successful democratic elections three years ago, Congo — a vast country

the size of Western Europe — has struggled to contain the cycle of violence that

continues to wrack its lawless east.

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