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KIGALI, March 7 (AFP) - International Women's Day will be particularly painful this year for women in Rwanda, with ceremonies to be held Wednesday in a tiny village where thousands of women and children were massacred last year.
The weekly state-owned Imvaho newspaper said Tuesday that Rwandan women will celebrate their day "in pain", with the massacres perpetrated last year by the country's Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups still fresh in their minds.
The country plunged into a bloodbath last April after president Juvenal Habyarimana died in a suspect rocket attack on his plane. Up to one million people were killed.
Officials said Women's Day will be celebrated Wednesday in the village of Ntarama, south of Kigali, the site of the slaughter of thousands of women and children. A march in memory of the victims and a military parade will be held there.
Other towns across the country have been encouraged to hold similar events and to collect funds to help the tens of thousands of children orphaned during the four-month war.
mgu/at/js/ccr AFP AFP
