France on Sunday strongly condemned "the terrible massacre" of about 160 people on Friday evening in a Congolese Tutsi refugee camp at Gatumba in Burundi, French Foreign Ministry declared on Sunday.  

Paris is "actually in close contact with its partners of the United Nations Security Council. The facts should be established without delay, so that the committed crimes don't remain unpunished," said French Foreign Ministry's spokesman Herve Ladsous in a statement.

France urged all countries of the region to guarantee the respect for territorial integrity of all their neighbors and to show the responsibility and determination in order to avoid affecting regional peace, he said.

At least 159 people were killed by bullets, machete or burnt alive, and 110 others were injured in an attack on the Gatumba refugee camp in Burundi, 4 km away from the borders with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

President of Burundi Domitien Ndayizeye accused the Hutu extremists coming from DRC of being responsible for the mass murder.

(Xinhua News Agency August 16, 2004)