Renewed fighting between rebels and government forces in Burundi erupted in the capital Bujumbura yesterday, leaving streets littered with bodies and doubts about a peace process intended to end almost 10 years of civil war.
Up to 200 people are thought to have died in the past six days as rebels armed with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and rifles pushed deep into the central African city in one of their biggest recent offensives.
The Tutsi-dominated army claimed on Saturday to have repelled the mainly Hutu attackers with the help of helicopter gunships, but explosions and gunfire rocked the north and east and reporters counted 28 bodies in one neighbourhood alone. Many of the dead were teenagers dressed in civilian clothes, some clutching grenades. They were assumed to be members of the National Forces of Liberation, known by the French initials FNL.
Witnesses said the bodies of two senior rebel commanders, Col Raphael Barankitse and Maj Giovanni Kwizera, were among those found in a rural part of Gikoto district.
"I can hear the rebels singing gospel songs near my house and bullets flying everywhere," a western aid worker said.
By late afternoon fighting had subsided, but a rebel spokesman, Pasteur Habimana, said they would continue until the government was ousted: "We will attack again when the time comes."
The FNL is estimated to have thrown three battalions, numbering about 2,100 fighters, into the week-long offensive. Dozens of civilians and up to 30 government soldiers are thought to have died, but most of the casualties appeared to be among the rebels.
"Our leaders told us that God had revealed to them that we would be successful with this attack and we would not retreat," one young rebel was quoted as saying.
The army chief of staff, Gen Germain Niyoyanakana, said it was the biggest attack the rebels had carried out on Bujumbura.
"We are controlling the situation very well," he said. "If we look at the losses we inflicted on the rebels, we think that they will stay quiet for a while."
But many residents spent a sixth night in makeshift camps in the city centre rather than risk returning home amid rumours that rebels were killing civilians.
Some 200,000 people have died in Burundi since the civil war flared, and the fighting goes on despite recently agreed peace deals. - (Guardian Service)