Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo are charged with three crimes against humanity and seven war crimes, including murder, rape, sexual enslavement and pillage for allegedly commanding the fighters responsible for the attack.

Prosecutors say they led two mobs of child soldiers and older militiamen who destroyed the village of Bogoro in Congo's mineral-rich Ituri province on Feb. 24, 2003, hacking to death many of their victims with machetes.

Women were raped and killed or taken as sexual slaves by the attackers, according to the indictment.

Fidel Nsita Luvengika, representing hundreds of victims, said Monday establishing the truth will allow them to mourn slain family members.

"Many victims don't know where their children are buried," he told reporters.

The court's rules allow victims to take part in trials and claim compensation for their suffering.

Victims in this case also include 10 former child soldiers forced qto take part in the attack. Their Belgian lawyer, Jean-Louis Gilissen, said he hopes the trial will allow them to rebuild their shattered lives.

"The reparation they are seeking is simply to have a future," he said.

The court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, said the Ituri conflict was part of a civil war that raged in Congo in the aftermath of neighboring Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Prosecutors plan to call 26 witnesses to support their case. In an indication of the ongoing climate of fear in Ituri, 21 of them will testify with their identities shielded from the public.

Prosecutors say Katanga, 31, led the Patriotic Resistance Force in Ituri, while Ngudjolo, 39, commanded the National Integrationist Front. Both are expected to enter pleas of not guilty.

One of Katanga's attorneys, Andreas O'Shea, said his client, "shares and sympathizes with the grief of the victims."

Ngudjolo's lawyer Jean-Pierre Kilenda said his client rejects the charges. "At no time did he concoct any criminal scheme to raze Bogoro village," Kilenda said.

The only other trial under way at the court, which began operations in 2002, also focuses on an alleged Congolese warlord active in Ituri, Thomas Lubanga, who is charged with recruiting and using child soldiers.

Former Congolese Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba is in custody and is scheduled to go on trial next year for alleged crimes in the Central African Republic.

Others indicted by the court include Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir and two other Sudanese charged with atrocities in Darfur and the leaders of brutal Ugandan rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army. A former Lubanga supporter, Bosco Ntaganda, also has been indicted but remains at large in Congo.