Burundi’s lone remaining Hutu rebel group kept up attacks ahead of the nomination of a new president for the country, the military said on Thursday.
Fighters from the National Liberation Forces (FNL) fired six 60mm mortar bombs at the capital late on Wednesday, army spokesperson Major Adolphe Manirakiza said.
The bombs fell harmlessly in fields on the north-eastern edge of Bujumbura, he added. The army riposted with shelling and heavy machine-gun fire.
On Sunday, the FNL, which has normally confined its attacks to the west and south, hit positions in northern Kayanza province for the first time since the start of Burundi’s ethnically driven civil war in 1993.
On Monday, the group also attacked Musigati, about 30km north of Bujumbura in western Bubanza province where the group is usually active, military officials said.
No one was killed or injured in either attack, they said.
The FNL is the only one of Burundi’s seven rebel groups not to have signed on to the peace process that will see new President Pierre Nkurunziza and his government sworn in as the country’s first post-transition administration on August 26.
The group has continued to fight despite the signing in May of a tentative ceasefire with the outgoing transitional government and ongoing efforts to bring it to talks aimed at producing a comprehensive settlement.
Nkurunziza, the only candidate, will be formally endorsed as president on Friday by the two Houses of Parliament dominated by his former Hutu rebel group, the Forces for the Defence of Democracy, following polls in June and July.
Burundi’s war erupted in 1993 after the assassination of the country’s first democratically elected president, a member of the Hutu majority, by members of the Tutsi-minority-dominated army. To date, it has claimed about 300 000 lives. — Sapa-AFP