Rebels killed 11 civilians, including three women and a child, in a terrifying overnight raid at Mutakura on the northern outskirts of Burundi's capital Bujumbura, local residents said Saturday.
Several dozen rebels, some dressed in military uniforms, stormed into the district at around 11:00 p.m. (0900 GMT) on Friday, bursting into houses, killing without warning and demanding money, people told an AFP correspondent.
The automatic weapons fire and grenade blasts lasted for almost two hours, witnesses said.
The assailants, believed to be from one of the armed movements of the Hutu majority at war with the mainly Tutsi army, had slashed one woman with a machete and then shot her in the head, the correspondent saw.
Nearby, a witness said the raiders "smashed in the door of a house, forced the three people inside to their knees -- two students and the guardian. They killed them with a burst of Kalashnikov fire."
A survivor told how his wife was shot. "They forced the door and asked me for money. I gave them all my fortune, 7,250 (Burundi) francs (about seven dollars), but they wanted more. They drove me down on my knees.
"My wife got scared and yelled out. One of the two rebels said 'Kill her', the other one shot her in the head."
"I was left there with a screaming five-month-old baby in my arms," he added. "I was frightened they would come back, so I left the door wide open so they'd see the house had been visited."
"Without intervention by the security forces, this would have turned into a catastrophe," Interior Minister Ascension Twagiramungu said on the scene in the morning.
The rebels had been "all over the place," one witness said. "They found their way round in the night using whistles and singing religious songs."
Twagiramungu, who arrived with National Defense Minister Colonel Cyrille Ndayirukyie, said "the rebels have no military capability, just a criminal capacity. We'll go on fighting them."
He urged the international community and regional leaders to "draw their own conclusions. These people should show us where they stand, if they back peace or violence."
The raid followed talks last week in the Kenyan capital Nairobi aimed at bringing about a settlement to end seven years of civil war. Three remaining Tutsi parties signed a pact already reached in Tanzania in August between the government, the parliament and most political groups.
However, the two main Hutu rebel movements, the Forces for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) and National Liberation Front (FLN), have refused to sign a ceasefire ahead of further political talks. They did not attend long rounds of negotiations in Arusha, Tanzania, but were in the Nairobi corridors.
Rebel spokesmen have set out other pre-conditions, including the release of those they consider political prisoners and the closure of the remaining camps into which the government rounded up civilians on the grounds of their own protection, rousing international protests over the conditions.
South Africa's former president Nelson Mandela is leading the mediation bid to end a conflict which has claimed at least 200,000 lives since Burundi's first Hutu president was assassinated in October 1993.
While Mandela has been endeavoring to get all parties concerned to add their signatures to a peace and power-sharing pact, rebel activity has remained high in the Bujumbura-Rural district around the capital -- BUJUMBURA(AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
