Rebels rampaging in the strife-torn central African state of Burundi have decapitated a local government official, a provincial governor said on Tuesday.
The news of the attack came as the Burundi army accused the main Hutu rebel movement in Burundi, the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), of failing to respect a ceasefire in the country where a civil war has claimed more 300 000 lives since 1993.
The attackers belonging to the Hutu ethnic group had killed the victim late on Monday night at a community some 70 kilometres north of the capital Bujumbura, said Benoit Ntigurirwa, governor of the province of Cibitoke.
”The headman at Bukorokoro Hill was killed yesterday about 11 pm (2100 GMT) during an attack led by rebels of the FDD,” he said.
The victim had been ”decapitated by rebels and several households were looted,” the Burundi army press service confirmed.
A separate FDD group was also alleged to have attacked another community at Buseruko, also in Cibitoke province, late on Monday.
The local governor said the aim of attacks in the area was to seize food, money and clothes.
Mamadou Bah, representing the African Union in Burundi, said 32 tons of food had been sent to rebels in the east of the country on Tuesday to try to stop them marauding.
Six civilians and a policeman were killed in Bujumbura in the latest attack blamed on another Hutu group, the National Liberation Forces (FNL), according to an official toll on Tuesday.
After Monday’s attack, police had reported that one of their officers and one civilian had died in an exchange of gunfire which prompted 10 000 frightened civilians to flee the capital’s Kinama district.
”This morning we found six bodies of people identified as local civilians,” Kinama mayor Berchans Nsabimana said.
The FNL denied any involvement, saying rival groups, including the FDD, had staged the incident to smear the FNL.
Meanwhile, the army said on Tuesday that the FDD was failing to respect fully an appeal to end hostilities that have dogged the small central African state for 10 years.
Despite participating in a joint appeal last week for a ceasefire, the FDD continued attacks, the army said.
”The appeal has not been totally respected,” said army spokesperson Augustin Nzabampema: ”Hostilities between the army and the FDD have lowered in intensity since the signature of the agreement in
Pretoria, but the effects have not yet been felt by the population.”
Burundi’s transitional government and the FDD agreed in Pretoria last week to abide by a ceasefire originally signed in December.
Burundi President Domitien Ndayizeye and FDD leader Pierre Nkurunziza launched the ceasefire appeal after signing a peace accord that foresees military and political power sharing.
But excesses continued against the civilian population, said Nzabampema: ”Theft, looting and targeted assassinations have not ended.”
A senior army official said the FDD was no longer picxking on army targets, but carrying out raids on civilians.
A local human rights organisation called Iteka claimed on Tuesday that the two main Hutu insurgencies, the FDD and the FNL, had killed more than 15 local government officials in the first half of this year for collaborating with the army. – Sapa-AFP