Kigali — The government has rubbished claims by the DRC army that the two mass graves recently discovered in Rutshuru, 50km north of Goma, contained bodies of Congolese massacred by the Rwanda Army in 1996.

Speaking to journalists at his office on Tuesday, the Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region Dr. Richard Sezibera dismissed the allegations, saying they were unfounded and baseless.

"That is totally a fabrication. The Rwandan Army has never been in the DRC to murder people. Besides, how can you simply come to a conclusion that the bodies were for Congolese, I don't seem to understand this and the Congolese Army need to stop such allegations," he warned.

Sezibera's reaction follows allegations in the media made by the DRC Fifth Brigade Commander Col. Jean-Marie Shekasikila that dozens of human skulls, bones and body tissue, exhumed from mass graves in Rutshuru since mid-September were of Congolese Hutus.

Survivors of the massacres however told MONUC they were attacked by Rwandan militia of the Forces Democratique de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), a view shared by the acting Governor of South Kivu Province, Didas Kaningini.

A senior officer of the FDLR, Edmong Ngarambe, blamed the Rastas, a breakaway faction of the FDLR, which he said worked closely with Congolese militia.

"It was Col Kiyombe Chinja Chinja's Rastas who mistreated us. They accused us of giving away their positions to the Congolese army and MONUC," the survivor, whose name was withheld, was quoted as saying.

The FDLR has variously been accused of mass killings and human rights violations in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Many of their leaders are accused of masterminding or participating in the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda in which about one million Rwandans were killed in 100 days.