Democratic Republic of Congo: deadly alliances in Congolese forests

In November 1996, an estimated 700, 000 Rwandese refugees returned to Rwanda from camps in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly known as Zaire. Information received at the time by Amnesty International indicated that the refugees were returning to Rwanda to escape the armed conflict and the deliberate targeting of refugees and refugee camps. Human rights and humanitarian organizations expressed concern that many of the more than 1, 000, 000 refugees from Rwanda and several hundred thousand from Burundi were being deliberately and arbitrarily killed in large numbers by forces of the main armed opposition group, the Alliance des forces démocratiques pour la libération du Congo (AFDL), Alliance of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo.


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