Congolese rebel leaders yesterday ordered an investigation into reports that at least 500 civilians were hacked or shot to death by rebel troops in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo over the New Year.
"If it is true, then those responsible will be punished . . . but we cannot say if it is true or not," a rebel leader, Mr Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, told reporters in announcing the inquiry.
The Catholic missionary news service MISNA said on Tuesday that ethnic Tutsi Banyamulenge rebel forces had killed at least 500 civilians between December 30th and January 1st in retaliation for an attack by Mai Mai tribesmen in the area.
The report said the massacre took place at the village of Makobola, 15 km from Uvira, near Lake Tanganyika in the south Kivu region of eastern Congo.
The MISNA editor, Father Giulio Albanese, said in Rome the victims included many women, children and elderly people and that some had already been buried.
"We are receiving little by little the names," he said. "Counting has not ended. There are roughly 500 dead. They were killed with machetes, shot. It's something unbelievable."
In August MISNA reported that rebels had slaughtered as many as 600 civilians at a Catholic mission in Kasika, another remote town also in South Kivu province.
Congolese rebels, backed by Rwanda and Uganda, opened an offensive last August in an effort to topple President Laurent Kabila and now control much of the eastern half of Congo.
The rebels draw support from ethnic Banyamulenge Tutsis, who settled from Rwanda more than 200 years ago, but have found it harder to win over other local populations, particularly the Mai Mai.
The Mai Mai, together with Rwandan and Burundian militia, have staged numerous ambushes against civilians and rebels in eastern Congo in the last several months. They believe that covering themselves with water or wearing water-related objects such as shower caps or bath plugs protect them from bullets.
Mr Kabila's army is bolstered by troops from Angola, Zimbabwe, Chad and Namibia and in recent days has claimed significant advances in the east.
In Tanzania's capital, Dar-es-Salaam, the base for many aid agencies with operations around Uvira, officials said they had no reports of the massacre.
Mr John Mutondo, an official with the Catholic relief organisation Caritas. which runs programmes for refugees from the area, said he had heard no word of the massacre from recent arrivals.
Mr Abdulkadir Jama, a programme officer with the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR in the western Tanzanian town of Kigoma, also said he had heard nothing of the incident save for news reports.
Both said, however, that refugees trickling into Tanzania from Congo had reported being attacked by rebels since the uprising began in August.
The area around Uvira, across Lake Tanganyika from the Burundi capital, Bujumbura, is a poor region with a long history of violence.
Rwandan soldiers fighting with Mr Kabila's forces during his original rebellion were accused of massacring hundreds of civilians and Rwandan Hutu refugees, but efforts by the UN to investigate the charges were blocked by Kinshasa.