US Edition The mutilated bodies of up to 200 unarmed soldiers and civilians have been found floating in rivers leading from the north-eastern Congolese city of Kisangani where rebel authorities were reported last week to have foiled an attempted coup.
Many victims, who also included police officers, were shot dead on the banks of the Tshopo river where poor families wash their laundry, according to eyewitnesses.
Details of the failed coup against the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), a rebel organisation backed by neighbouring Rwanda and which occupies about one third of the Democratic Republic of Congo, only emerged last week as the bodies floated downstream. Aid workers say that three weeks after the uprising, decomposing corpses are still rising to the surface.
Fishermen who discovered the bodies, many of which were half-naked, manacled, decapitated and disembowelled, believe that they were mutilated in the hope that they would remain under water. Some of the bodies were found in bags, and rocks had been placed in the stomachs of others.
One local resident heard 17 separate bursts of gunfire at the beach on May 14 which he believes were part of a series of executions. Policemen and members of human rights organisations saw army officers being rounded up.
"They killed many of our officers, many innocent policemen. They cut off their heads and ears," said one officer, who is now in hiding. "Even now they're still searching the townships and denouncing policemen and soldiers as deserters," said another.
Local residents believe that the rebel authority in Kisangani carried out the massacre as part of its own fight for survival after four years of war in Africa's third biggest country.
The RCD has failed to seize power in Kinshasa, the capital, and following the collapse of peace talks, many rebel commanders are rumoured to be planning to cross over with their troops to the government. Any such move would be a fillip for President Joseph Kabila, 31, the son of Laurent Kabila, the murdered former president.
The president recently secured an alliance with other rebel factions, backed by Uganda, while receiving military support from his long-term allies, Zimbabwe and Angola.
The massacre in Kisangani followed early morning radio broadcasts by mutinying soldiers who encouraged listeners to kick out the rebel authorities and kill Rwandans.
"If you are a Congolese soldier, take up your arms," the soldiers said in Swahili. "If you are civilian, take a stone. If you are a boxer, if you do karate or wrestling, if you are a sorcerer, or a witch, bring us your knowledge, your power."
More than a thousand people rallied to the call and human rights activists say that five people were killed in the resulting riot, including two Rwandans and a soldier who was burnt to death by the crowd. Two hours later, the reprisals began.
In the rundown Mangobo Commune, Fr Guy Verhaegen, a Belgian Jesuit priest saw a group of Congolese RCD and Rwandan soldiers whom locals say belong to a death squad called the "Amazulu" shoot dead a woman in the market and fire indiscriminately into homes. "I saw a pick-up driving through the parish and periodically machine-gunning people," said Fr Verhaegen.
Kisangani, known by its Belgian colonisers as Stanleyville and the setting for V S Naipaul's novel A Bend in the River, was once the heart of a vast jungle trade network.
Expatriates, however, have long since fled - most businesses having been killed off by the war and, before that, the decades of misrule under late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Both warring factions accuse the other of monopolising the last remaining viable business - the diamond trade.
Three times in the past four years, the city has been a battleground for Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers, backing rival factions.
Hundreds have been killed in the crossfire, but the past three weeks have shocked and terrified the population. Many people are in hiding. "The authorities have sent us a message," one resident said. "We now know now they can kill us at any time."