|
Burundi rebels 'restore order'
05/09/2007 17:47 - (SA)
Eric Manarakiza
Bujumbura - A faction of Burundi's last rebel group offered no apologies for an attack that saw 26 people killed, instead claiming it was "restoring order", within the group, the spokesperson said on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, rival factions of the National Liberation Force clashed in the capital killing 25 rebel combatants and one civilian in the worst fighting in Bujumbura in four years.
The fighting took place after months of simmering tension over leadership of the group.
"We came down to Buterere (a district in Bujumbura) to restore the order within the FNL troops and to prove to the international community and to the Burundians that (rebel leader) Agathon Rwasa has FNL combatants behind him," said Pasteur Habimana, the rebel spokesperson, speaking on the phone from neighbouring Tanzania.
Habimana accused South African mediators of turning a blind eye to government support of a rival faction in the group, including supplying them with weapons and food. The rival faction said it was attacked by Rwasa loyalists, sparking Tuesday's fighting.
Bujumbura last saw such violence in July 2003, when scores of people died in a week of fighting between soldiers and rebels.
Last week, the National Liberation Force split. One faction accuses Rwasa of being insincere in implementing a permanent cease-fire agreement that he signed with the government in September 2006 and wants that agreement implemented quickly. They have called on other members of the group to join them.
Rwasa has said in the past that the government is responsible for delaying the cease-fire agreement.
Defense Minister Germain Niyoyankana told journalists on Tuesday that government forces did not act when the rebel group split, but now "we recognise that we didn't take it seriously".
Niyoyankana said the army would protect the rebel faction that was attacked until they were moved to a place outside the capital, where they would wait for the permanent cease-fire agreement to be implemented.
Burundi is just coming out of a 13-year conflict that has killed more than 250 000 people. The war started in October 1993, when paratroopers from the Tutsi ethnic minority - which had long dominated politics and the military - assassinated the country's first democratically elected president, a member of the Hutu majority.
All of Burundi's main rebel groups from the majority Hutus have signed peace deals, leading to democratic elections in 2005 that established President Pierre Nkurunziza's administration. Only the National Liberation Force, a Hutu group, held out on the earlier peace agreements.
|
News
