Rwandan Hutu rebels killed eight civilians with machetes and knives and wounded several others in a night raid on a village in the east mountains of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a senior local official said Monday.

This was the first blooding incident in the past two months in the region. It happened at the village of Kaniola, 60 km southwest of Bukavu, capital of the province Du Sud-kivu, and the attackers' motive is still unknown.

The attackers were believed to have come out of the Mugaba forests in the Walungu region, which is partly dominated by the Rasta militia known for its cruelty against terrorized civilians, said a captain named Lokanga from the DRC governmental army's 10th military area located in Walungu.

Over the past three weeks the situation in the region has been quite peaceful, Lokanga said, adding he couldn't understand how the Rwandan militia penetrated into the area under his troops' control.

On the same day, Kemal Saiki, the chief UN spokesman in DRCongo, said that about 25 Rwandans, ethnic Hutu rebels, infiltrated through Congolese army lines Sunday night and murdered the villagers. "There was no looting; it seemed like a terror attack," he said.

Local residents believed the raid was the doing of the Rasta militia, a name taken by a dissident wing of an armed ethnic Hutu movement active on the DRC side of the Rwandan border -- the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

The mainstream FDLR consists partly of Hutus held responsible for the Rwandan genocide in 1994 in which some 800,000 people were killed before they were drove out by a rebel front from the Tutsi minority which later set up a new government.

An estimated 10,000 or more Hutu rebels still remain in Congo, more than a week after the passing of a Congolese government ultimatum for all foreign armed groups to leave the country.

President Joseph Kabila said foreign fighters -- mostly extremist Rwandan militiamen, but also Burundian and Ugandan rebels -- should leave or face Congo troops backed by UN peacekeepers.

Living in remote forest bases in the lawless east for more than a decade and preying on local residents, the Rwandan militias have been notoriously difficult to dislodge.

Despite peace deals that ended Congo's 1998-2002 war, the country's eastern borderlands have remained restive, with killings, looting and rapes still frequent.

The UN has 16,700 peacekeepers in Congo -- its largest peace mission in the world -- and is trying to help Congo organize its first presidential election in 45 years, which is set for next year.

Source: Xinhua