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KIGALI, March 27 (AFP) - Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR) rebels killed at least 18 people when they fired mortars on a camp for displaced people in northeast Rwanda, national radio said Friday.
Many people were injured in the attack on Wednesday night and thousands fled the camp at Rwebara for Ngarama town, more than 30 kilometres (20 miles) distant, the radio said.
In the southeast of the small highland nation, more than 13,000 people have refused to return to their homes in southeastern Rwanda following tribal fighting early this month.
An informed source who had visited the troubled Bugesera region said Friday that almost 2,000 people had gone back to their villages, but others expressed fears after seeing a house torched overnight.
Officials say 152 people died when Hutus attacked the Tutsi minority people in the region, but local sources put the toll at several hundred.
The FPR, which invaded northern Rwanda from Uganda in October 1990, is made up largely of exiled Tutsis, many of whom had served in the Ugandan army.
Local authorities have organised meetings in the Bugesera aimed at getting people back to their homes, but the move applies only to those whose houses have not been razed to the ground or damaged.
The Rwandan Government, which has taken recent steps towards introducing multi-party democracy, has banned political meetings in the area and retained a 12-hour daily curfew.
mgu/nb/ns AFP AFP
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