Burundi Army: 87 Killed in Day of Bloodshed

Scores of bodies have been found strewn across Burundi’s capital Bujumbura after the worst outbreak of violence since the failed coup in May.

Eighty-seven people were killed on Friday in a day of clashes in the Burundian capital, the army said, including four police officer and four soldiers. Baratuza, the army’s spokesman, said that the attack was planned in order to steal weapons and free the prisoners.

The sounds of battle continued past daybreak, with residents staying indoors and only military and police vehicles seen patrolling the city centre.

But some residents accused authorities of trying to hide evidence of massacres perpetrated by the security forces.

Some residents ventured out of their houses Saturday but largely remained uneasily in their neighbourhoods. The hands of some of the dead were tied behind them, said the witness, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for his safety.

Earlier, a soldier who had spoken to colleagues inside a base in Bujumbura’s northern Ngagara district told Reuters at least two soldiers were killed.

“I fear I can be killed like my friend yesterday, police came to search our house and by chance I escaped”.

“What is the global community waiting for?” “It is an absolute horror, those who committed this are war criminals”, the witness said.

The fighting started when unidentified gunmen attacked three military installations.

“After more than two hours of clashes, the army repulsed the southern attack, while virtually all the attackers were killed in the Ngagara base”, a senior army officer told AFP.

Army spokesman Colonel Gaspard Baratuza said that an additional 21 attackers were captured and five other soldiers were wounded, following the early morning assaults.

Friday’s fighting is seemingly part of violence linked to the statement of the ruling party in April that Nkurunziza would run for a third period, which foreign observers and many Burundians had opposed as unconstitutional and in breach of peace treaties.

Burundi’s 12-year civil war, which ended in 2005, pitted rebel groups of the Hutu majority, including one led by Nkurunziza, against what was then an army led by the Tutsi minority.

Hundreds have been killed in protests, armed attacks and assassinations since the unrest began in April and more than 200,000 have left the country, according to United Nations figures.