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KIGALI, March 9 (AFP) - The government has declared a state of siege in the Bugesera region of southeastern Rwanda following tribal clashes which left at least 20 dead and forced thousands to flee their homes, officials said Monday.
Well-informed sources said all meetings of more than three people, political gatherings and the carrying of weapons were banned under the emergency measures.
The latest unofficial toll in the fighting which erupted last week between the minority Tutsi tribe and members of the majority Hutu community stood at 20 dead as of Monday, although a Rwanda human rights group based in Brussels said Sunday that 30 people had been confirmed killed, mostly in fighting Friday and Saturday.
Diplomatic sources said paramilitary police were patrolling the region and had arrested some 50 people and imposed a 12-hour dusk-to-dawn curfew on Sunday.
More than 6,000 Tutsi fled their homes to take refuge at a Catholic mission at Nyamata since the clashes first broke out overnight Wednesday, officials said.
Tension between the Tutsi and the Hutu, who hold power here, had been mounting in Bugesera and Kanzenze, south of the capital, since March 1 when the opposition, Tutsi-based Liberal Party staged a rally.
Its speakers openly attacked local authorities and also criticised the former sole legal political party, the National Republican Movement for Development.
The Liberals, one of nine new movements allowed by the authorities in moves towards democracy and away from military-dominated rule, are preponderantly Tutsi.
Officials suspect the party of being the internal wing of the Patriotic Front, a rebel movement which attacked government troops in October 1990 after entering Rwanda from Uganda. It has kept up sporadic raids.
The Committee for the Respect of Human Rights and Democracy in Rwanda (CRDDR) said in Brussels Sunday that its sources had counted 30 bodies in the area, mostly Tutsis, and said the death toll could be as high as 300.
Arson and looting were continuing and Rwandan troops have arrested 70 people, it said Sunday.
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