Rwandan Hutu guerrillas are reported to have killed up to 19 people and looted homes in an attack on a village in eastern Congo.
Uvira district administrator Medard Majaribu Mufumbe said the raid showed the guerrillas, known as the Interahamwe, were operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Uvira and South Kivu districts in large numbers.
The Interahamwe fled Rwanda after their involvement in the 1994 genocide, and an estimated 10,000 still live in the Congolese forests and mount sporadic raids in Rwanda.
"This massacre happened early on Sunday at around 3 a.m.," Majaribu said by phone. "They have also looted houses."
He said the Interahamwe had been fleeing attacks from the Congolese army after entering the Uvira district from northwest Burundi last week, and had been heading for the Sange Hills when they killed 19 people in Kihinga village.
South Kivu's military commander, General Mbuza Mabe, said his soldiers in the area had told him 15 people, all civilians, had been killed in the attack by the retreating Interahamwe.
In a statement to the diplomatic corps, Congolese Foreign Minister Antoine Ghonda said his country wanted an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to demand the immediate withdrawal of Rwandan troops from its territory.
A U.N. spokeswoman in Bukavu, a town on the Rwanda-Congo border, said the United Nations had received reports of the attack on the village but could not confirm the death toll. Eliana Nabaa said the Congolese army was due to hand over to the United Nations eight captured Interahamwe so they could be
repatriated.