Burundi: Election day violence

2005-06-03 13:08

Bujumbura - At least one person was killed and one wounded in polling day violence on Friday in war-ravaged Burundi where voters were casting ballots in key municipal elections, police said.

The death and injury were caused by a grenade explosion near a polling station in the town of Muyira in Bujumbura Rural province outside the capital where sporadic gunfire had been heard before the polls opened, they said.

However, they stressed the grenade explosion in Muyira and shootings, which were also reported in Bubanza province, appeared not to be part of a wider trend to disrupt the polling nationwide.

"The elections have been disturbed in Bubanza and Bujumbura Rural ," said Edouard Nibigira, the commissioner of Burundi's internal security police.

"They are sporadic shootings intended to intimidate people from going to vote.

"It is not a question of a generalised violence," he said, adding the perpetrators of the incidents were not immediately known.

In Bubanza, he said 14 polling stations had not opened as scheduled on Friday morning due to the shooting, which did not result in casualties.

Bujumbura Rural, one of Burundi's 17 provinces, is the stronghold of the country's lone remaining Hutu rebel group, the National Liberation Forces (FNL), which last month agreed to a tentative truce with the government.

Despite the pact, violence has continued although the FNL had pledged not to disrupt the elections as long as it was not attacked by the army.

Friday's election of 3 225 municipal councillors, the first in a series of planned polls, marks the first time Burundians have elected their own leaders since the outbreak of the 1993 civil war between the Tutsi-dominated army and Hutu rebels that claimed some 300 000 lives.

- AFP