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Rwandan Hutus deny attack which killed 12 park rangers in DR Congo

RWANDAN Hutu rebels have denied the massacre of dozens of park rangers killed at the end of April after being blamed in a preliminary report into the attacks by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government.

Major-General Maurice Aguru Mamba, commander of the Corps for the Protection of National Parks & Related Natural Reserves, said initial evidence suggested that the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) carried out the attacks in Virunga park that left 12 dead.

Managers of the park, Africa’s oldest and a Unesco World Heritage site, insisted they had “precise indications” that the FDLR had carried out the attack. But the FDLR said that it had “nothing to do with these events” and “unconditionally condemned this cowardly attack.”

The group insisted that the park was under the control of Rwandan soldiers, who, it said, were responsible for the killings, in “the latest in a long list of crimes.”

Rwandan President Paul Kagame denied the charges. “The government of DRC knows that there is not a single soldier in eastern DRC. Take it from me that there is no single RDF soldier in that part of the world,” he said.

A total of 176 park rangers have been killed in the past two decades.

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