Four civilians and four soldiers have been killed during an overnight clash in central Burundi blamed on Hutu rebels, government and military sources said on Thursday.
Fighters of the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) ”attacked and rustled cattle, then soldiers and civilians who tried to chase them fell into an ambush”, said a local administrator, adding that four civilians and four soldiers were killed.
The unrest, confirmed by the army without further comment, is the first blamed on FDD rebels since its leader, Pierre Nkurunziza, and Burundi President Domitien Ndayizeye agreed to a definitive ceasefire in talks that ended just after midnight on Tuesday in Pretoria, South Africa.
Ndayizeye, president of Burundi’s transitional government, and Nkurunziza signed an agreement to implement a ceasefire deal hammered out late last year.
An FDD military official denied involvement by the group, the largest rebel movement in the Central African country, in the clash in Mbuye, about 60km northeast of the capital, Bujumbura.
”None of our men are in this area. We think rather that it was a rebel group that was responsibile,” he said by telephone, requesting anonymity.
He was presumably referring to Burundi’s second-largest rebel group, the National Liberation Forces (FNL), which was not party to the December ceasefire and has repeatedly refused to enter into talks with the government.
About 300 000 people have been killed in the civil war that broke out in 1993 between rebels of Burundi’s Hutu majority and the army dominated by minority Tutsis. — Sapa-AFP