THE UN said 298 Burundian Hutus were killed just after they returned home from exile last month in an attack on a village church by men using guns and hand grenades.
A human rights team which visited the Burundi province of Cibitoke on Thursday after hearing rumours of the incident learned for the first time at first hand of the massacre, which took place on the night of October 22nd-23rd, the UN said in Geneva yesterday.
Citing a report from the team, part of a seven member human rights observer group in Burundi, the UN press service said 258 people died during the assault and 110 were wounded.
Of these, 40 died later of their injuries.
The attackers used guns and hand grenades to kill their victims in the Murambi church in Buganda commune.
Neither the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, nor the human rights, team's report alleged that the Tutsi dominated Burundian army was behind the killings.
But the UN report said human rights observers in Bujumbura, Burundi's capital, expressed serious concern to the local authorities there last week that refugees were being channelled into Cibitoke and Bubanza provinces.
In both areas, it said, "there is considerable confrontation between rebel forces and the government and humanitarian workers have extremely limited access".
A UNHCR spokeswoman, Ms Christiane Berthiaume, said the dead were among some 3,000 Burundian Hutus who fled a Tutsi revolt in eastern Zaire and crossed to Cibitoke.
Diplomats in Geneva said the massacre raised new questions' about the forced return of Hutu refugees to Burundi and Rwanda, where armies and governments are dominated by the Tutsi minority.