More than 40 Hutu rebels killed in Congo air raid
         

GOMA, Congo – More than 40 members of a Hutu militia suspected of atrocities during Rwanda's 1994 genocide were killed in an overnight air raid, a Congolese military spokesman said Friday.

The air raids targeted the rebel Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, said Oliver Hamuli, a spokesman for a joint Rwanda-Congo military operation aimed at stamping out the remnants of the Hutu militia.

The group is made up primarily of ethnic Hutus from Rwanda who fled across the border into Congo after being linked to the 1994 slaughter of more than 500,000 mostly ethnic Tutsi civilians.

He also said several militia members were wounded in the attack that took place late Thursday in Kashebere, in the eastern Congo region of Masisi.

A few miles (kilometers) away, a second attack on the Hutu militia took place, with an unknown amount of deaths, Hamuli said.

"The death toll there was high as well. The survivors threw the bodies in the river," Hamuli said.

The echoes of Rwanda's genocide are still being felt in Congo nearly 15 years later. The presence of the Hutu militia in Congo's terraced hills has destabilized the region, giving rise to a counter rebel group, made up of Congolese Tutsis. While that group claimed to be protecting Congo's Tutsi minority from the Hutu militia, it too is accused of grave abuses.

Congo has long accused Rwanda of backing the Tutsi militia formerly led by rogue general Laurent Nkunda. Rwanda, on the other hand, has accused Congo of aiding the Hutu militia and the two countries twice went to war over the issue.

But Congo began a joint operation last month with Rwanda to finally root out the last of the FDLR. Rwandan troops are expected to leave Congolese territory by the end of the month.