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BRUSSELS, March 2 (AFP) - Rwandan rebels last week launched an attack in which two nuns from France and Rwanda were killed in the northern market town of Rushaki, Rwandan Ambassador Francois Ngarukiyintwali said here Monday.
Eight people died in the attack, when the rebels "sacked the Rushaki health centre and stole medical equipment and medicines," the ambassador said. "It is out of the question that Rwandan troops would do that."
Ngarukiyintwali denied a claim Friday by the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR) that the army had massacred civilians and was using local people as "human shields".
The FPR also said that the French nun, Renee Popaa, 87, was "the first foreign person to lose her life" in the conflict.
The rebels, mostly from the minority Tutsi clan, first launched an invasion of Rwanda by exiles from neighbouring Uganda in October 1990 in a bid to oust the majority Hutu regime.
jh/nb/jb AFP AFP SEQN-0179
