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KIGALI, Jan 26 (AFP) - Political and ethnic violence has left at least 53 people dead in Rwanda's northwestern Gisenyi province in the past week, Prime Minister Dismas Nsengiyaremye said Tuesday.
Youths of the ruling Hutu majority had attacked members of the Tutsi minority and the Bagogwe herding clan, Nsengiyaremye said, citing a provisional official toll.
Gisenyi is the birthplace of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, whose National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRNDD) opposes a peace deal reached with the Tutsi rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR).
Backers of the formerly sole, ruling MRNDD and members of the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic (CDR) had attacked opposition party supporters as well as people from the ethnic minorities, the prime minister said.
Ten of the Bagogwe, who live in the Gishwati natural forest near Lake Kivu, were killed on Monday. More than 250 people have fled to neighbouring districts.
Six other people died last Wednesday and Thursday during protest demonstrations in Kigali and provincial towns, when 48 people were injured, 11 seriously.
Nsengiyaremye said the national ministerial commission on security, in a meeting, asked him and the head of state to ensure that order was restored in the troubled province at the earliest opportunity.
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