No image available
/ 4 September 2006
Gunmen lobbed seven grenades at a bar in the capital over the weekend, wounding 36 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.
Water levels on Lake Tanganyika, the world’s second-deepest lake, have dropped more than 1,5m, creating problems at Burundi’s main port and raising concerns among environmentalists. An environmental specialist said climate change and deforestation are contributing to the lower lake levels.
Burundi’s Parliament overwhelming elected a former rebel leader president on Friday, culminating a three-year peace process after almost 12 years of civil war in the central African country. Pierre Nkurunziza’s election had been expected, as his Force for the Defence of Democracy, once Burundi’s largest Hutu-led rebel group and now a political party, controls both houses of Parliament.
A former rebel group in Burundi has won the majority of seats in the first parliamentary elections in the war-ravaged Central African nation in 12 years, the top election official said on Tuesday. The Forces for the Defence of Democracy won between 60% and 80% of the polling stations in Monday’s election.
A court has convicted 13 people and given them sentences ranging from the death penalty to two years’ imprisonment for their role in the killing of a senior World Health Organisation (WHO) official in Burundi. Defence lawyers have not indicated whether they will appeal the verdict.
No image available
/ 25 January 2005
Burundi will hold a referendum in February on an interim Constitution that needs to be put in place before holding elections, after postponing the vote three times for lack of funds, Burundi’s elections chief said on Monday. The country’s electoral commission now has the money to buy ballot boxes and indelible ink to hold the referendum on February 28.
No image available
/ 17 September 2004
Pro-government Mayi-Mayi militia battled former rebels for control of an east Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) town in a week of artillery and gun battles that sent the town’s 15 000 people fleeing, officials and residents said on Friday. United Nations radio reported at least 15 ex-rebels killed in the clashes at Walikale.
Militias in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continue to recruit hundreds of child soldiers — apparently in an effort to collect cash — in defiance of a national peace treaty, a United Nations disarmament programme and international law, a Congolese human rights group said on Friday.
When the mob came to kill the 1 000 women, children and old people who had come to him for refuge, Evariste Nyatanyi gently told the angry, machete-wielding men that they would have to kill him first. Nyatanyi is one of about 200 men and women being honoured at a Heroes’ Summit in Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura.
Hutu rebels attacked a military checkpoint near a primary school in eastern Burundi, killing two pupils, a teacher and four government soldiers, government and rebel officials said on Wednesday.