Goma, Tuesday

RWANDAN Hutu refugees, some of them children, stoned a man to death in

a camp in eastern Zaire today, accusing him of being a Tutsi spy.

The incident took place in Honga, a camp of 20,000 refugees to the

north-west of the frontier town of Bukavu.

''Children joined in the stoning and when he was dead they dumped his

body in the nearby lake and life in the camp went back to normal,'' said

Ray Wilkinson, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Rwanda's new government, installed by the Tutsi-dominated Rwanda

Patriotic Front after it won the civil war in July, has appealed to the

Hutu refugees to return home.

But it has said that Hutus blamed for the massacre of hundreds of

thousands of minority Tutsis will have to stand trial for their crimes.

Lynchings and beatings have become commonplace further north in camps

surrounding Goma, which hold more than 800,000 Hutus. The victims are

often refugees who showed signs of wanting to go home, incurring the

wrath of Hutu militiamen and thugs who are loyal to the ousted

government and who terrorise the camps.

Today's killing was the first incident of its kind in Bukavu, which

was swamped by 70,000 refugees when the French army pulled out of the

Rwandan ''safe zone'' and handed control to the UN earlier this month.

Reuter.