Militants suspected to be National Liberation Front, FLN, Rebels, opened fire on a bus in southeastern Rwanda, killing two people and injuring six others, according to Rwandan police.
The FLN, which are the armed wing of the anti-government Movement for Democratic Change (MRCD), were said to have carried out Saturday’s attack, which murdered the bus driver and a passenger, according to authorities.
“Armed thugs, suspected to be remnants of FLN operating from across the border, shot at a public passenger bus,” the Rwanda National Police said late on Saturday.
The assailants in the incident on the Nyambage-Rusizi route in the district’s Nyungwe Forest were being pursued by the police, they added.
According to authorities, the FLN began attacks in 2018 from the Nyungwe forest area near the Burundi border.
The National Liberation Front, FLN, originally known as Frolina, was founded in the mid-1980s by Joseph Karumba and composed of militant Hutu refugees from Burundi, the group launched its first insurgent attack on the Burundian military in Mabandal on August 13, 1990.
Afterwards, Karumba was repeatedly arrested in his country of exile, Tanzania, and the local authorities attempted to suppress his small militant group. From 1992, however, the Tanzanian government decided to tolerate Frolina’s activities, and granted Karumba asylum.
From their bases in Tanzania, the Frolina’s militant wing, the People’s Armed Forces waged a low-level guerrilla war against the Burundian government.
In April, the Rwandan government affirmed Paul Rusesabagina’s 25-year prison sentence for his role with MRCD, despite the fact that he was portrayed in the film “Hotel Rwanda” as hiding hundreds of victims during the 1994 genocide.
Though part of Frolina refused to agree to the Arusha Accords, and continued its insurgency, the rest of the party adhered to the ceasefire. Four Frolina members became part of the Transitional National Assembly of late 2001, and the party demobilized its paramilitary forces in 2005.
Its importance declined afterward, however, with Frolina gaining less than 1% of the vote in the 2010 Burundian communal elections.