Scores Of Hutus Die In Rwanda Fighting

A tiny island in a lake bordering Rwanda was covered Wednesday with the bodies of Hutu militiamen who died fighting Rwandan troops or drowned in a desperate attempt to flee.

Col. Charles Ngoga, the Rwandan commander, said his troops had recovered 171 bodies but others were thought to be lost in the waters of Lake Kivu. More than half of the dead Hutus drowned, he said.

Two more Hutu soldiers died Wednesday when they dove off their makeshift raft of banana tree trunks and refused to surrender to Rwandan troops in a patrol boat.

Hutu soldiers and militiamen fled Rwanda in July 1994 fearing they would be killed by victorious Tutsi rebels in revenge for last year’s genocide. More than 500,000 Rwandans, mostly minority Tutsis, were killed in the massacres blamed largely on the Hutu-led army.