Burundi’s two Hutu rebel movements are engaged in clashes near the capital of the tiny Central African country, rebel and army sources said on Monday.
They said the clashes began on Sunday between fighters of the larger Forces for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) — which has signed a peace pact with the government — and the National Liberation Forces (FNL), which has shunned negotiations to end a decade of ethnically based warfare.
FNL spokesperson Pasteur Habimana said the fighting broke out Sunday in Mubimbi and Mpanda, respectively 30km east and 12km north of the capital, Bujumbura.
Local officials and army spokesperson Colonel Augustin Nzabampema confirmed the clashes, but the FDD denied that any fighting took place.
Habimana said FNL forces prevailed in the fighting, the first between the two rebel groups since 1996.
”We responded to the provocation of the FDD who executed eight combatants and six civilian members of the FNL on Friday,” Habimana said.
He said the FDD and its political wing, the Front for Democracy in Burundi (Frodebu), ”have set themselves the goal of annihilating the FNL”.
The FNL spokesperson added: ”We ask ask the FDD to align themselves behind us, on the side of the Hutus, for genuine negotiations with the Tutsis.”
The FDD’s secretary general, Hussein Radjabu, said by telephone from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where new peace talks for the central African country are scheduled: ”Today we are advancing straight towards peace. We won’t accept people who get in the way of peace, whoever they are.”
A twice-delayed regional summit on peace in Burundi is due to be held on Sunday in Dar es Salaam to discuss stumbling blocks in the peace process, notably questions of power sharing and the integration of rebel forces into the army.
Ahead of the summit, President Domitien Ndayizeye is to begin meeting on Tuesday in the Ugandan capital Kampala with FDD leader Pierre Nkurunziza.
The FDD and the government signed a ceasefire in December last year, but it was not implemented, with each side accusing the other of violations.
Burundi’s civil war broke out in 1993, pitting rebels from the Hutu majority against their Tutsi rivals, who control the military and held sway over the government until the interim power-sharing regime was installed in November 2001.
More than 300 000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the bloody conflict. — Sapa-AFP