Gunmen lobbed seven grenades at a bar in the capital over the weekend, wounding 30 people in the fourth grenade attack in Bujumbura since July.
Police were on Monday searching for suspects in Sunday’s attack in Bujumbura’s Nyakabiga district. Mayor Richard Nimubona said the violence is linked to the country’s tense political situation.
”Some politicians are using militia to attack such public places where people gather to show that there is insecurity prevailing in the capital,” Nimubona said on Monday.
Several people — including Burundi’s former president — have been arrested in recent weeks in connection with an alleged plot to overthrow the government.
This Central African nation is emerging from a dozen years of conflict between the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsis, who had dominated the government, economy and military since independence from Belgium in 1962.
The conflict killed more than 250 000 people, most of them civilians who died from disease and hunger. The war started in October 1993, when Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country’s first democratically elected president, a Hutu.
All of Burundi’s main Hutu rebel groups signed peace deals, leading to a Constitution that includes a formula for ethnic power-sharing and democratic elections last year.
Only the rebel National Liberation Force has not signed the deals. Although it has entered into negotiations with the government, the group has continued attacks.
In addition to the grenade attacks on Bujumbura pubs, five rockets were launched into the capital, seriously wounding one person in a home. — Sapa-AP