Burundi’s last remaining rebel group fired six mortar bombs at the capital overnight, hitting the area around the presidential palace but causing no casualties, the army said on Wednesday.
Army spokesperson Major Adolphe Munirakiza said the National Liberation Forces (FNL) bombarded the Kiriri district of eastern Bujumbura with 60mm mortars at around 11pm (9pm GMT).
Munirakize said government troops had intervened to halt the attack, which lasted about 30 minutes.
No FNL official could be contacted for comment on Wednesday.
Kiriri, the city’s most exclusive district which also houses most ambassadorial residences, adjoins the FNL’s main area of operations in the countryside around Bujumbura.
The latest attack came after four civilians, including a woman and her 12-year-old child, were killed on Sunday night in a rebel raid on the Gihosha district of northeast Bujumbura.
The FNL, the only one of Burundi’s seven rebel groups not to have signed a peace deal with the government, has stepped up attacks around the capital in recent weeks.
”The FNL is trying to demonstrate that there can be no real peace without their participation,” a foreign diplomat said. ”They want to put pressure on the government but especially on the international community to press the government to negotiate.”
The FNL agreed for the first time on February 1 to hold unconditional talks with the government and a presidential spokesperson said recently that the two sides are expected to meet in Tanzania ”in about 10 days”.
But the spokesperson for the government denied it, although Tanzanian diplomats and United Nations sources said plans for talks were well advanced. The tiny central African nation is struggling to emerge from more than a decade of civil war that has claimed the lives of about 300 000 people, triggered by the assassination in 1993 of the first popularly elected president from the Hutu majority, Melchior Ndadaye.
It is expected to hold a series of elections in the next six months for local councils and a new Parliament, which will choose the country’s new president.
The foreign diplomat said President Domitien Ndayizaze wanted to go out on a high note, having secured peace, while the main former rebel group, the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), wanted to leave negotiations until after the elections.
Burundi electoral officials last year said they wanted the series of polls completed by April 22, with the chance a president would be selected by a new legislature on August 11.
But the authorities in Bujumbura have released no official dates and there is growing uncertainty that any elections will be held in the near future.
Last month Burundi’s citizens overwhelmingly approved a new power-sharing Constitution in a nationwide referendum, and this week Parliament passed two Bills governing the conduct of the elections and the running of local authorities.
Parliamentary Speaker Jean Minani said that with the Bills out of the way, the national electoral commission should immediately publish the timetable for the polls.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma called in Kampala on Tuesday for Burundi to ensure the timetable is maintained. – Sapa-AFP