Rwandan army takes journalists to alleged massacre site

The Tutsi-dominated Rwandan army has taken journalists and human rights observers to a network of caves in the north-west of the country in the Gisenyi regionwhere Hutu rebels are said to have been based in recent months.

An army spokesman, Richard Sezibera, said the caves had probably been used since early 1995 by members of the Hutu Interahamwe militia and the former Rwandan army ousted by Tutsi-led rebels who seized the capital, Kigali, in 1994.

A Rwandan human rights group has alleged that many people were massacred in the caves in October this year -- a claim which the army dismisses as propaganda.

The spokesman said he believed that some people had starved to death, and he acknowledged that some militiamen had been killed.

A correspondent for the BBC says that looking down into the caves, it was just possible to make out human remains, and the smell of rotting flesh left little doubt that people had died there.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service