MISNA
Congo DR
05.22.00
Over 300 people were killed during the night between Sunday 14th of May and Monday 15th of May in Katogota, 60km south of Bukavu, (South Kivu, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo) in a massacre carried out by the forces of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD). The news was referred by our MISNA sources, who have already identified hundreds of women, elderly people, children and men, shot to death or killed with machetes and for the most part thrown in the Ruzizi River. The men responsible for the atrocious massacre belong to the Rwandan and Burundian armies and Banyamulenge formations. At first, the criminal act was believed to have been committed in retaliation against the Mayi-Mayi, groups of Congolese nationalist partisans. Later, more accurate accounts by witnesses indicated that on Sunday afternoon a top Burundian army officer was killed due to an internal dispute between RCD soldiers. The episode had created panic among the residents of the Katogota village, to a point that the soldiers took quite a while to reassure the civilians and restore calm, until dusk. 'When night settled in - commented a survivor (who will remain anonymous for security reasons) - the massacre began, it lasted from 7:30 at night until 5:00 on Monday morning. The bodies of the victims, initially spread throughout the village and surrounding area, were in part dragged into the cane thickets along the river and others dropped into the water. Some were even forced down the latrines'. (BO)