Hutus Return, Find Massacre After Fleeing Raid By Military

Hutus returning to their homes after a raid by Tutsi soldiers found their neighborhood strewn with the bodies of men, women and children who had been shot or bayoneted.

The precise number of dead could not be immediately determined, but reporters saw at least 20 bodies in a small area of Kamenge, a neighborhood of Bujumbura, the Burundi capital. At least 15 others, mostly women and children, were found on a hill outside the adjacent neighborhood of Gasenyi.

They were killed when the Tutsi-dominated army swept through Wednesday in search of Hutu militiamen.

An estimated 100,000 people have been killed since October 1993 in a power struggle between the majority Hutus and the Tutsi minority in the central African nation. The slaughter has raised fears the struggle could escalate into a genocide similar to the one last year in neighboring Rwanda that killed at least 500,000 people.

The government has tried without success to disarm Hutu and Tutsi militias since the assassination of Burundi’s first Hutu leader, President Melchior Ndadaye, in an attempted coup in October 1993.

Hundreds of Hutu civilians were killed in March 1994 in Kamenge when the army attempted door-to-door searches for weapons. Wednesday’s attempt to do the same came after a week of gunbattles with militiamen inside Kamenge.

However, by the time the army moved in Wednesday, the militiamen had abandoned the neighborhood, slipping through the army cordon and fleeing to the hills above Bujumbura.

They left behind only those residents who “could not flee” and who were killed “because they were Hutus,” said Pascal Nihimana, 31, a resident of Kamenge.