At least 21 people were killed when armed men opened fire on a bus and two other vehicles on a highway near Burundi's capital Bujumbura, an AFP journalist reported from the scene Friday.
A lorry, a bus and a pick-up truck were heading for Bujumbura when they were stopped Thursday afternoon by a barricade and machine-gunned some 30 kilometers (20 miles) northeast of the capital near the town of Kinama.
Some of the passengers were then summarily executed, according to a survivor.
A dozen wounded persons were taken to Muramvya hospital, 20 kilometers from the scene of the ambush, a hospital source said.
The bus, owned by a private company called Titanic, was travelling from Kigali in neighboring Rwanda to Bujumbura.
The dead included a several women, one of them white, and three children. On Friday morning, some of the victims' bodies lay strewn in the back of a truck. They were later taken to the capital.
At least three people, including a former interior minister, were killed in another ambush attributed to Hutu rebels a few kilometers (miles) away on the same road on December 15.
Burundi has been wracked by a seven-year civil war pitting forces of the government dominated by the Tutsi ethnic group against several ethnic Hutu rebel groups.
Last week, three civilians were killed in a similar ambush 70 kilometers south of Bujumbura -- BUJUMBURA (AFP)
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