Burundi rebels kidnapped 250 to 300 mostly teenaged boys from their boarding school yesterday, a raid believed to be a forced round-up of fighters for their eight-year campaign against the Tutsi-dominated army.
The ethnic Hutu rebels sprayed gunfire and set fire to the Musema school library, living areas and director's office before leaving with all the male pupils, except four who managed to escape, the local government administrator, Mr Come Hatungimana said. It was the second mass abduction this week. "It seems that they are headed towards Kibira forest," he said in Kayanza province in north-west Burundi.
"I think the rebels want to recruit them into the rebellion. People from all corners of the district fled as the rebels were shooting everywhere." He said no civilians were killed in the attack. The students, mostly Hutus, are thought to be aged 13 to 21. The army was already hunting for around 50 schoolboys aged 10 to 16 and several teachers abducted on Tuesday from a primary school in Ruyigi province, 105 km from Bujumbura. The rebels behind both attacks are believed to be members of the FDD, Burundi's main Hutu rebel group.
An FDD commander confirmed that his group was responsible for yesterday's attack.
"The students are together with us, all of them are tired," he said from an undisclosed location.
"The Burundian military are attacking, killing and raping civilians . . . we took the children with us to protect them from the military because the (children) are Hutus," he said.
The commander said his forces had killed 12 soldiers and seized six guns. The army has said it killed more than 160 rebels in the past week, but confirmed only four soldiers dead.
Independent confirmation was not available for either claim.
The Burundian human rights organisation, Ligue Iteka, said the rebels' claim that they wanted to protect the boys was false.
"I am really shocked by this abduction and we condemn this new behaviour in the rebellion," Ligue Iteka's president, Mr Pie Ntakarutimana, said. "They are forcing schoolchildren on to the battlefield." More than 200,000 civilians have been killed since war broke out in Burundi in 1993, with disease and hunger in its wake.
Fighting has intensified in the week since the installation in Bujumbura of a new ethnic reconciliation government intended to bring peace to the central African country under a plan mediated by the former South African president, Mr Nelson Mandela.
But the rebels have refused to negotiate with the new cabinet, saying they were not involved in peace talks.
Burundi's ethnic mix mirrors neighbouring Rwanda, with a deep divide between the minority Tutsi, traditionally cattle herders, and the majority Hutus, traditionally farmers.