Crisis in Burundi Continues to Worsen

Colonel Jean Bikomagu, a key figure in the former Tutsi-dominated army, was gunned down in his auto by unidentified assailants as he was about to enter his home in Kinindo, a southern district of the capital Bujumbura, a family member said.

In a statement on Friday, Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva that Burundi “has been slipping closer to the edge with every high-profile attack and killing”.

Bikomagu’s daughter, who was with him at the time, was seriously wounded and rushed to hospital.

More than 181,000 people have fled Burundi because of the recent instability and violence, fearing another civil war like the Tutsi-Hutu war that left 300,000 dead.

One day after the assassination of the man who was the head of Burundi’s army during the 13-year civil war, AU Commission chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma called for “utmost restraint” by all sides.

Burundi has been rocked by violence since April when President Pierre Nkurunziza launched his bid for a third term in office.

“Another black weekend in Burundi. Blackened by the assassination of a senior member of the Burundian army in retirement, Colonel Jean Bikomagu…Very sad, very shocking”.

Nkurunziza was reelected in July to a third term that opponents and Western powers said violated the constitution and a peace deal that ended the civil war in 2005.

Bikomagu began serving as army chief-of-staff in 1993, the same year that the country’s first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, was assassinated.

Since the outbreak of violence in Burundi in April, at least 96 people have lost their lives, mostly opposition supporters, while some 600 people have been arrested and at least 60 torture cases reported, the official added.

Election-related violence has been especially frequent in Bujumbura, where the sound of gunfire is regularly heard at night.