Bujumbura | Wednesday
HUTU rebels in Burundi on Tuesday kidnapped scores of school children and their teachers, a day after 36 people were killed in rebel attacks and less than a week after the installation of a new power-sharing government, a local government official said.
The kidnapping took place early in the morning in Buruhukiro in the eastern Ruyigi province, the source said.
“We have not been able to count the number of children kidnapped by the rebels but it is probably in the region of 70 small boys aged between 11 and 16,” he said.
“The rebels came to Kirambi II school and went through all the rooms, where they chose all the big boys from Class Four and Six and took them away with their teachers,” he said.
“They said they were going to enrol them,” he added.
The same group of rebels later torched another school in the same area before heading to the Tanzanian border, the government official added.
On Monday, 36 people, most of them civilians, were killed in two separate rebel attacks.
On November 1, a transitional power-sharing government aimed at giving ethnic Hutus a greater share of power was installed as part of Burundi’s long peace process.
But Hutu rebels did not sign the August 2000 accord that provided for the interim government and have yet to agree to a ceasefire.
Some 250 000 people, mostly civilians, have died in Burundi since Hutu rebels launched an insurgency in 1993. – AFP