15 August 2004	Sunday	28 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425

GATUMBA, Aug 14: Nearly 160 people were slaughtered at a refugee camp for Congolese Tutsis in Burundi in an overnight attack which the country's president blamed on Hutu extremists from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

There were charges that Burundian and Rwandan Hutu rebels were involved in a coordinated attack on the camp, while the Burundian army said it was braced for further attacks on Tutsi refugee camps in the area.

"We have firm reports that Mai Mai, Interahamwe and FNL (National Liberation Forces - Hutu Burundi rebels) who attacked Gatumba are ready to do the same at two sites in the province of Cibitoke," a Burundian army spokesman said.

The Mai Mai are a tribe of traditional Congolese fighters, while the Interahamwe are Rwandan Hutu extremists who fled into eastern DRC after carrying out much of the killing in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

In Addis Ababa, the African Union condemned the massacre, saying it would pursue the perpetrators and rapidly deliver justice.

At least 159 people were killed and 110 injured in the attack Friday night on the Gatumba refugee camp, which lies just inside the border with the DRC, near the capital Bujumbura, the military said. The dead were shot, burned and hacked to death.

The FNL immediately claimed responsibility for the raid, but President Domitien Ndayizeye insisted it had been carried out by foreign assailants.

"Our country has been attacked, our border has been violated by elements coming from the DRC to massacre Congolese civilians who had asked for asylum," he told reporters at the Gatumba camp.

"According to early observations, there is a coalition which carried out this unspeakable massacre against the Banyamulenge people," Ndayizeye said. "Those killed are civilians, children, women and youths."

Most of the refugees at the Gatumba camp are Banyamulenge, people of ethnic Tutsi origin, who fled the Sud-Kivu region in the east of the DRC earlier this year during an uprising in the town of Bukavu.

There have been tensions between Burundi and the DRC for six years as Kinshasa has accused Burundi of intervening on its territory while Bujumbura has charged that the DRC was harbouring fugitive Hutu rebels.-Reuters