Amuzati Nzoli says he watched from a hiding place in bushes as rebel soldiers killed and ate his six-year-old nephew.
Accounts like the one told by the middle-aged Pygmy are sweeping through northeastern Congo.
Human rights activists and investigators from the United Nations say rebels cooked and ate at least a dozen Pygmies and an undetermined number of people from other tribes during recent fighting with rival insurgents.
Nzoli says rebels from the Congolese Liberation Movement invaded his forest camp and slaughtered the dozen people they found at the camp.
Nzoli, who had been hunting, arrived during the attack and hid.
He says rebel fighters butchered his nephew, Kebe Musika, and roasted his body parts over an open fire, grabbing pieces from the smouldering embers.
"They even sprinkled salt on the flesh as they ate, as if cannibalism was all very natural to them," Nzoli said.
It is not the first time cannibalism has been reported in Congo; it generally occurs during great upheaval, like the Simba rebellion in 1964.
The latest upheaval is the country's four-year civil war, which has left an estimated 2.5 million people dead, the vast majority from starvation.
Fear and punishment
As in the past, the attacks are fuelled by a mix of tribal animosities and a desire to spread fear. There is also a belief among some that eating an enemy is a source of power.
Rebels used cannibalism "to provoke terrible fear in their foes and pave the way to dramatic success in the battlefield," said Apollinaire Kighoma, a Roman Catholic priest in Mangina, 19 miles northwest of Beni.
The priest has heard accounts about the practice from hundreds of people displaced by fighting who have taken refuge at his church.
"Once you develop a reputation as a cannibal, no one wants to stay in your path," Kighoma said.
Most of the reported acts of cannibalism took place between November and December when the Congolese Liberation Movement launched a successful offensive to retake Mambasa, a town about 70 miles northwest of Beni.
Tribal rivalries, fuelled by the fight to control the region's mineral and timber resources, determined the victims.
Aside from the Pygmies, many other victims were Nande, the tribe from which most of the leadership of the rival rebel group, the Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement.
Congolese Liberation Movement rebels may have eaten Pygmies as punishment for their guiding rival troops through the dense forests, said Angali Salehe, the chief of the camp were Nzoli lived.
Jean-Pierre Bemba, the leader of the Congolese Liberation Movement, says he is "shocked" by reports that his troops ate people.
"I don't even know how to explain it," said Bemba, who is poised to become one of Congo's four vice presidents under a peace deal reached last year.
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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