Three civilians were killed and about 10 others injured in a grenade attack in Burundi’s Bujumbura, capital blamed on the country’s last remaining active rebels, the army said on Monday.
Army spokesperson Adolphe Manirakiza said National Liberation Forces (FNL) insurgents threw grenades into two bars in Bujumbura’s north-eastern Gihosha neighbourhood late on Sunday.
The attack came after the government announced on Friday that it had agreed on the terms of a ceasefire with the FNL in South African-mediated peace talk in Tanzania.
But the FNL, which is the only one of Burundi’s seven rebel groups not to have signed a 2000 peace pact and to be left out of the power-sharing government elected last year, said there were outstanding issues that have to be resolved before signing a peace deal.
The talks have stumbled over the sharing of military and government posts, with the insurgents demanding a 60% stake in the national army, including the post of the army general, which the government has flatly rejected.
Despite the talks, the rebels have continued with sporadic attacks, killing and looting villages to replenish their supplies since the negotiations opened on May 29.
Burundi is still struggling to recover from the devastation of a 13-year-old civil war that has claimed about 300 000 lives since it erupted with the assassination of the country’s first democratically elected president, a member of the Hutu majority, by members of the then minority Tutsi-dominated army. — Sapa-AFP