Rwanda

The international community claimed to have learnt the lessons of Rwanda. Yet 10 years on, the terrible cycle of ethnic violence has started again - in neighbouring Burundi.

In the wreckage, the torn-out pages of a child's book, a burnt shoe and a small pile of battered cooking pots. A team of people arrived and started to pull down the charred remains of the tents and pick their way through the possessions of the refugees who had once lived at the Gatumba transit camp in Burundi. Their job was to dismantle what little was left.

Large tents made of UNCHR (United Nations Commission on Human Rights) green plastic sheeting flapped in the wind. In some places the plastic was blackened by smoke, in others it was all but destroyed. Scattered on the ground were the white masks and gloves dropped by the charity staff who had gathered up the dead into body bags. The men worked in silence, and the smell of charred wood and dead bodies still lingered in the air.

Just over a week has passed since 160 Banyamulenge refugees were killed in this desolate transit camp, which lies under the shadow of the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) Kivu mountains. They had come here to the Burundian border seeking respite from the war that continues to ravage the DRC, hoping if not for peace then at least for a temporary rest from the horrors they have grown up with for most of their lives. They found instead that war cannot be outrun.

At the Prince Charles Regent hospital in Burundi, where many of the massacre's survivors were taken, the doctors know the cost of war too well. The hospital is relatively well equipped with medical supplies, but the beds are rusty, the sheets are worn, and they hoped never to deal with injuries on this scale and in these numbers again.

"We were overwhelmed by victims when they arrived," says the hospital director, Dr Nzotungwamayo. "Some had only small wounds but others had been shot or injured by grenades, others cut with knives and machetes. Two pregnant women had been kicked in the stomach. Both miscarried."

In the crowded wards, women lie groaning, unable to suppress their pain. Others simply turn their backs, expressing their grief internally. Judith Nabeza, 23, is trying not to worry about her only son, Prince. He is seven years old and he lost his leg to a grenade during the attack on the camp.

That night, Judith says, she and Prince prepared for bed as normal. They lay down in the small bed in the plastic shelter where they had made their makeshift life with other families. Then the shooting began. "Prince was lying next to me and suddenly we heard all this noise and shooting," she says. "I took Prince to try and leave but a grenade went off and got his leg... and I was injured in the stomach."