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Soldier killed in Burundi
army base shoot-out
(AFP)
6 February 2010
BUJUMBURA — Two Burundian
soldiers went on a shooting spree Saturday, killing a colleague and wounding a
civilian in the latest in a string of incidents involving the army, a spokesman
said.
"Early this morning, two
soldiers approached the entrance of the camp in Ngagara," in the capital
Bujumbura. "One of them pounced on the sentinel, yanked his rifle away and shot
him at point blank," army spokesman Gaspard Baratuza said.
The assailant then started
to shoot before fleeing under retaliatory fire, in an exchange that was heard
across many neighbourhoods of the Burundian capital.
One of the assailants then
shot and wounded one civilian in the centre of the capital before encountering
police and being injured himself. The other fled.
Eighteen soldiers detained
a week ago and accused of attempting to destabilise the country's institutions
had initially been held in the targeted military base but Baratuza said they had
since been moved.
Unrest has been brewing in
both the 28,000-strong army and the 18,000 police, while political tensions are
also growing in Burundi ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections in
June and July respectively.
Burundi has been struggling for the past three
years to recover from a 13-year civil war between the armed forces, then
dominated by the minority Tutsis, and rebel movements from the majority Hutus,
which left at least 300,000 people dead.
