OWN CORRESPONDENT, Bujumbura | Monday
THREE more civilians have been executed in Burundi to the north of the capital, Bujumbura, witnesses said on Sunday.
It follows the execution of two civilians by Hutu rebels in the north of the country late on Friday.
In the latest incident, one of the civilians killed was a local administrative chief, Louis Twagirayezu, who witnesses said was “executed in cold blood” by “men in military uniform”.
His six-year-old daughter described how an armed gang entered their house in the Hutu area of Kamenge singing “we are the soldiers of God.”
Local officials, requesting anonymity, said they did not know the attackers’ identities but claimed the chief had received threatening letters from the rebel National Liberation Front who considered him “a traitor”.
They also said a woman died in the same area when she “fell on to electric cables” after being hit by a stray bullet from the same attack.
But her neighbours denied this, saying the woman had been burned on the arm with an iron before being shot.
The third victim was a young man found dead in a street after being beaten in the head with stones in the neighbouring Tutsi district of Cibitoke.
In the earlier incident, about 30 rebels of the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) entered the village of Kabuye late in the night Friday carrying a list with five names on it, Desire Nzigamasabo said by telephone from nearby Kayanza.
“They came across one of them [on the list] right away, but he had the presence of mind to give a false name,” Nzigamasabo said, adding that he did not know why the villagers were executed.
The Hutu rebels forced the man to lead them to his home, where they shot and killed a visitor mistaken for a person on the list, he said.
The group killed another person before a local mob chased them off, he said.
Since 1993, a civil war between the Tutsi-dominated regime and army and Hutu extremist rebel movements has claimed some 200_000 lives.
Attacks have become more frequent in Kayanza province, an area spared from much of the violence since 1994.
The upsurge in violence has been attributed to the return this year of about 4_000 FDD rebels previously camped in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. – AFP