Police Suspected in Attack on Refugees

Tanzanian police are suspected of burning down a church and beating Rwandan refugees taking shelter inside to make them join the mass return of Hutus to Rwanda, aid officials said. Twenty-eight Rwandan Hutu refugees staying at the church in the deserted Benaco refugee camp were attacked at night and forced to join a column of refugees trekking toward the Rusumo border crossing into Rwanda, officials in Tanzania said. “Someone went in there and beat them. The church was burned down. No bodies were found,” said a U.N. official in Ngara. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said that about 250,000 of the 535,000 Rwandan Hutus in northwestern Tanzania had crossed back into Rwanda.