Hutu rebels kill 11 Tutsis, including women and children, in Burundi

BUJUMBURA, Burundi (Reuters) -- Burundian ethnic Hutu rebels killed 11 civilians, including three women, four teen-age boys and a schoolgirl, during a night attack on the outskirts of the capital, witnesses said on Saturday.

A large band of Hutu rebels, some in military uniforms, some in civilian clothes, armed with machine guns and machetes, attacked the largely Tutsi suburb of Mutakura on Friday night.

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"The attackers were singing religious songs and those songs were coming from all sides, so we were surrounded and could not escape," 38-year-old Benoit Nkurunziza said.

"They entered my house, put me on the knees and demanded money. I gave them everything I had, then my wife started crying and one of the attackers said to his friends 'Kill this woman,' and they shot her."

The body of Nkurunziza's wife lay in the corner of the small room, a huge wound in her head and an expression of horror frozen on her face.

"Then I heard them entering my neighbor's house, and as I heard gunshots I realized they had killed my neighbor," Nkurunziza said. "I expected them to come back and finish me, I was trembling and tried to calm my five-month-old baby, who was crying."

The bodies of four teen-age boys lay in the house over the road. The mother of two of the boys also lay dead, a huge machete wound to her head.

Three adult men were also killed, according to witnesses.

War intensifies

Around 200,000 people, most of them civilians, have died in seven years of brutal civil war in Burundi, which began in 1993 when soldiers from the Tutsi minority killed the country's first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu.

Both the Tutsi-dominated army and Hutu rebels are accused by human rights groups of indiscriminate massacres of civilians.

Fighting has intensified in Burundi since the country's political parties signed a peace deal on August 28 after mediation from former South African President Nelson Mandela.

The main rebel groups did not sign the deal, saying they had not been consulted in the negotiating process, and a follow-up summit in Nairobi this week failed to get any agreement on a cease-fire.

Burundi's Interior Minister Colonel Ascension Twagiramungu said only the intervention of the army had prevented a bigger massacre.

"This is the proof the rebels have chosen violence, that they don't want peace and continue to kill," he told reporters at the site of the attack.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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