Nairobi: Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza has condemned the killing of a senior army officer, who was shot along with his wife and bodyguard in an attack that also wounded their child in the central African nation’s expanding wave of deadly violence.
Brigadier general Athanase Kararuza, who was a military adviser in the office of the vice president, was dropping his child at a school in a neighbourhood of the capital Bujumbura on Monday when his car was attacked by rocket and gun fire, army spokesman Gaspard Baratuza told reporters.
Kararuza has previously worked as a deputy commander of an international peace force in the Central African Republic (CAR).
“He energetically fought against the coup plotters last year and exceptionally contributed in strengthening peace and security during and after elections,” Nkurunziza said in a statement late on Monday.
“We humbly pray that with the help of God perpetrators of the shameful acts are arrested and quickly punished according to the law.”
Tit-for-tat attacks between Nkurunziza’s security forces and his opponents have escalated since April 2015 when he announced a disputed bid for a third term as president and won re-election in July.
The U.N. says more than 400 people have been killed and over 250,000 have fled the country.
Burundi and neighbouring Rwanda, which both have an ethnic Hutu majority and Tutsi minority, have been torn apart by ethnic conflict in the past.
Experts fear the recent violence during the political crisis in Burundi may reopen old ethnic wounds and risk causing civil war.
As a step to defuse the crisis, former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa—heading a mediating team under the East African Community trade bloc which Burundi belongs to—said on Sunday he will be convening talks among all the parties in the dispute between May 2-6 in the Tanzanian city of Arusha.
Willy Nyamitwe, a spokesman in the president’s office, said they were yet to receive a formal invitation to the talks.
“The government of Burundi has to be consulted, we have to agree upon persons to invite, the date and the venue,” he said.
Officials in the opposition could not immediately be reached for comment.
Previous talks held last year faltered when the government refused to meet with people it said were supporting violence.
On Monday, the international war crimes court said it will investigate the rising violence in Burundi.
Nkurunziza’s opponents said his third term bid broke a peace agreement that ended a previous civil war while the government said a third term was legal, citing a constitutional court ruling.
The president won re-election in July.
Three armed groups, including one led by officers that attempted a coup in May 2015, have launched armed rebellions against Nkurunziza’s government.
Reuters
