RWANDA - Rebels attack truck, kill three, others injured

CONGO, Kinshasa (AP):

Rwandan Hutu rebels attacked a truck in eastern Congo, killing at least three people and wounding several others, the United Nations said yesterday. UN-run Radio Okapi earlier reported the rebels killed 21 people in the attack in the heavily forested Walikale territory, but UN spokeswoman Sylvie van den Wildenberg said peacekeepers on patrol in the area who responded to the assault initially confirmed only three dead. Wildenberg said peacekeepers evacuated several wounded civilians from the scene of the attack to a nearby hospital and escorted the truck safely back to a populated village in the region. She said the confirmed death toll was preliminary. Eastern Congo has been wracked by violence since Rwanda's 1994 genocide spilled war across the border. Hutu militias that parti-cipated in the massacres of more than 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus sought refuge in Congo.

Walikale has also been the scene of violence and hundreds of mass rapes in recent months, with the UN reporting the rape of 303 civilians between July 30 and August 2 alone.