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RUHENGERI, Rwanda, Sept 7 (AFP) - The governor of the northern Rwandan province of Ruhengeri called Sunday for tighter security along the border with the former Zaire.
"The border zone is a veritable hotbed of insurgents," said Boniface Rucaku. "While some attack in one area, others get ready to attack in another," he said, adding that the situation could persist for a long time.
He said the only way to guarantee security in the north would be to keep infiltrators from crossing over from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
A massacre on August 21 at a camp for Tutsi refugees in Mudende, western Rwanda, in which 148 people were killed by Hutu rebels assisted by armed groups of local peasants, was the worst in continuing unrest in the area since May.
The rebels had infiltrated from hideouts in DRC.
Armed Hutu militiamen and troops of the defeated Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) were among hundreds of thousands of Rwandans who fled their own country into eastern Zaire in 1994 as Tutsi rebels won a civil war following three months of genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus by henchmen of the ousted regime.
But refugees -- together with the gunmen -- poured back into their own country late last year when Zairean rebel leader Laurent Kabila launched an initially Tutsi-majority rebellion in the east and swept across the country within six months to oust the regime of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
A state of permanent fear has been created in the region because of the systematic execution of civilians and local leaders by the rebels and reprisals against both the guerrillas and villagers by the Tutsi-dominant Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA).
Since the start of August most incidents have been in the Gisenyi area, farther south.
"We used to have problems from time to time. Now it's almost every day," a Gisenyi resident told AFP late last week.
Several attacks have occurred in the town of Kanama, east of Gisenyi, where infiltrators first attacked a munitions dump before freeing inmates from a prison and shooting those who refused to flee.
Rucaku said that although the Rwandan army controls Ruhengeri militarily, "that doesn't mean it can prevent all the saboteurs at work. It doesn't take many bullets to create panic in a central city."
Kinshasa has long sought to contain various dissident movements in Masisi and North and South Kivu, three eastern DRC provinces.
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