Rwandan rebels on the run from U.N. peacekeepers shot or stabbed to death 13 civilians in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a provincial governor said on Friday according to Reuters. "Thirteen civilians were executed last night in a group of villages in the territory of Mwenga," Didace Kaningini, interim governor of South Kivu province, told Reuters by telephone from the local capital Bukavu. "It was the FDLR (Rwandan rebels) that did this as they were retreating from U.N. military operations ... Survivors said armed men came into the village and started shooting. The population fled but some were stabbed and others were shot." The rebels, known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), have been in eastern Congo since they fled to the region after Rwanda's 1994 genocide, in which 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. The U.N. mission in Congo said it was aware of reports of an attack and was trying to verify them. The world body has mounted several operations in South Kivu this month to hunt down rebels following a string of attacks on civilians.
