Jean-François Le Drian@JF_LE_DRIAN
On April 21, 1997, during the First Congo War (also known as the AFDL rebellion led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, with the support of the Rwandan army: APR), a particularly deadly phase began.
Mass killings, in which Banyamulenge fighters took part—having been conditioned through ideological training provided by the Rwandan army—occurred near Kisangani.
On the conditioning of the Banyamulenge 👇
epoche.fr/2026/04/21/the…
During this period, hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees, fleeing the 1994 genocide and the fighting, and terrified at the idea of returning to Rwanda because of the mass killings carried out by the RPF against Hutu civilians, were gathered in makeshift camps along the Ubundu-Kisangani railway line, notably the Kasese I, Kasese II, and Biaro camps.
These camps housed exhausted, sick refugees, often mixed in with former combatants (ex-FAR and Interahamwe).
On April 21, 1997, local inhabitants of Kisesa (incited by AFDL/APR soldiers) attacked the Kasese I and II camps with machetes, arrows, and bladed weapons.
They killed an undetermined number of refugees and looted humanitarian aid stocks.
That same day, a train arriving from Kisangani brought special units of the APR (Rwandan army) to intensify operations against the camps.
Starting on April 21, humanitarian organizations (including UNHCR and MSF) were completely denied access to the camps, which prevented any assistance and any independent observation.
Mass crimes could thus be carried out on an industrial scale away from prying eyes.
The most documented massacres continued immediately afterwards: direct attacks on the Kasese and Biaro camps by AFDL and APR forces.
Thousands of refugees (mainly Rwandan Hutus, but also Congolese Hutus) were killed by bullets, bladed weapons, or burned alive.
Many others, unable to flee due to their poor state of health, “disappeared without a trace.”
These events were part of a wider series of systematic killings targeting Hutu refugees along the Kisangani axis, often described as genocidal massacres or “cleansing” in investigative reports (UN Mapping Report, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, MSF).
The exact number of deaths on April 21 alone is not precisely known (sources speak of an “unknown number” for the initial attack by the civilians of Kisesa, followed by thousands in the days that followed).
For the period of April 21–23 around Kasese and Biaro: several thousand refugees were killed or disappeared.
In the broader context of the Kisangani camps (April–May 1997), estimates range from several thousand to more than 10,000 deaths in this specific area.
Overall, between October 1996 and May 1997, the massacres of Hutu refugees in the DRC (then Zaire) are estimated at between 200,000 and 233,000 deaths (figures drawn from investigations such as the UN’s DRC Mapping Exercise and other reports).
The genocidal acts in Kisangani in April 1997 constitute one of the most intense and best-documented massacres of the war waged by Rwanda against the DRC.
Note: The actions of the Banyamulenge perpetrators, like those of the Hutu perpetrators in 1994, were not driven by any genocidal ideology but by conditioning through fear.
On this subject, read this article 👇
epoche.fr/2026/04/21/fro…
