- More than 11, 000 bodies of the Rwandan genocide victims will be laid to rest in Uganda as the country commemorates 15 years after the brutal killings of the 1994, Rwanda’s ambassador said in a statement.
Ambassador Ignatius Kamali said the bodies which have been placed in makeshifts graves along the Lake Victoria for more than a decade and half will be exhumed and buried in three new permanent mass graves.
Local reports said the bodies floated into the river for more than 100 miles and washed ashore in the Lake Victoria during the infamous massacre where more than 800, 000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed.
Mr Kamali said the Rwandan government has decided to give the victims of the genocide a decent burial, saying the government had already purchased the land for the mass graves in Uganda. He said the reburial should be finished in 100 days beginning 6 April.
Mr Kamali did not say why the bodies would remain in Uganda instead of returning to Rwanda, but said the initiative was an attempt to improve the relationship between the two neighbours.
The genocide began on 6 April 1994, after a plane carrying Rwandan Hutu President Habyarimana was shot down. Hutu militias began a campaign of orchestrated killings.
In a span of about three months, an estimated 800,000 people were killed - many hacked to death with machetes and hoes. Women were systematically raped and tortured, their limbs chopped off. In some cases, pregnant women died as their fetuses were ripped from their wombs.
Many bodies had been thrown into Rwanda's Nyabarongo River, which feeds into the Kagera River and which dumps into the large Lake Victoria. The bodies floated down the river for two or three days before reaching Uganda, said Ugandans who witnessed the bodies' arrival.
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