The uneasiness in the region has increased since at the Victoria Falls summit last week, when Mr Kabila stunned the heads of state present by telling them he was preparing to train soldiers and interahamwe militias from the Rwandan regime responsible for the 1994 genocide to fight again in Rwanda.
Before the August rebellion Uganda and Rwanda both had some troops on the eastern Congo border, by agreement with Mr Kabila and theoretically in joint operations with his forces against the tens of thousands of former Rwandan soldiers and interahamwe who have vowed to continue the genocide in Rwanda.
But in May Mr Kabila betrayed his allies and began a secret training programme for 15,000 interahamwe fighers and former Rwandan army officers.
Military commanders talk of isolating the interahamwe by coaxing civilians down from the hills, offering them food and shelter in the valleys below.
It was preceded by a rally in the local football stadium, where trenchant appeals were made for solidarity and collective resistance against the interahamwe.
Burundian officials say that Rwanda's Hutu militiamen, the interahamwe, were responsible for much of the recent killing around Bujumbura.
The government calls the attacks in the north-west "the continuation of genocide by other means".Many of the interahamwe fighters were recruited and trained in the refugee camps in eastern Congo and came back to Rwanda with the refugees when they were forcibly repatriated in late 1996.
Earlier this month the Rwandan government denied sending its own troops to help track down these rebels, but the two governments admit to facing a common enemy.Last year, Rwanda moved thousands of civilians into specially created settlements in order to give its troops a freer hand to clean out the interahamwe.
On June 3rd it was attacked by interahamwe militiamen, the Hutu killers responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, who came down from their bases in the surrounding hills.
The Hutu militia, the "interahamwe", made an appearance outside the church armed with spears, clubs and machetes.
The gendarme who stopped Madalena from being clubbed to death outside the church had no intention of killing her, despite what he told the interahamwe.
