UN observers say Burundi elections on Monday were not free – The Washington

Burundi has always been held in its most damaging following calamity ever since its friendly warfare prepared about ten years ago, with the use of strikes erupting late April against President Pierre Nkurunziza’s required get a 3rd phrase in business office.

“It’s a summit on the situation in Burundi“, Richard Owora Othieno, spokesman for the East African Community Secretariat, told Bloomberg news agency by phone Friday from the Tanzanian commercial hub of Dar es Salaam.

“Episodes of violence and explosions preceded and in some cases accompanied election day activities”, Haq said.

The mission concluded “that the environment was not conducive for free, credible and inclusive elections”.

In Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, six people including a police officer have been killed during gun battles on Wednesday, according to reports.

The violence, in Bujumbura’s Cibitoke district, is the latest in weeks of unrest, and comes as Burundi awaits results from elections on Monday that were boycotted by the opposition and widely condemned internationally.

An AFP reporter who later entered the area after the shooting had ended saw the bodies of six people killed, including a moneychanger in his sixties and his two sons, shot in the head.

Burundi is to hold the presidential election on July 15 and senatorial elections on July 24..

U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the United States urged Mr Nkurunziza “to place the welfare of Burundi’s citizens above his own political ambitions and participate in dialogue with the opposition and civil society to identify a peaceful solution to this deepening crisis”.

Vote counting from Monday’s polls has been completed at a local level, the election commission has said, but it remains unclear when final results would be announced.

Regrettably, the observers said, there was no agreement to improve these conditions and opposition parties decided to boycott the polls. Opponents of Nkurunziza’s attempt to stand again say a third term violates the country’s constitution.

At least 70 people have been killed and more than 140,000 have fled Burundi seeking refuge in neighbouring countries.

The United Nations Security Council said its 15 members were concerned that “minimum conditions” for voting had not been met on Monday.