MORE than 300 bodies, mainly of women, children and babies, were counted yesterday by witnesses after a fresh massacre in central Burundi.
A UN envoy pleaded for urgent steps to end the ethnic carnage which has killed more than 150,000 in the central African country in the last three years.
A UN special envoy to Burundi, Mr Marc Faguy, said in a statement: "The United Nations, the international community and Burundians can neither keep quiet nor remain neutral in the face of these acts of barbarism."
The killings at Bungendana in the Gitega region were blamed by the army on Hutu rebels of the exiled National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD). In Nairobi, the CNDD Africa representative swiftly denied the accusations.
The UN refugee agency said Burundi's Tutsi dominated army had expelled more than 1,000 Rwandan Hutus overnight as Burundi stepped up an operation to return the refugees home.
Local journalists who visited the attack site at Bungendana said they counted more than 300 dead Tutsis and 100 injured from the attack.
"I personally counted 304 bodies, all of them Tutsis. It was a horrific sight. I also counted 100 injured people who were receiving treatment," a reporter said.
Mr Faguy condemned the "absurd violence which kills hundreds of men, women and children", and called for the implementation of a Western backed African peace plan.
"We can only conclude that it is urgent to put into practice the conclusions of the Arusha summit whose principal objective was to stop this violence," he added.
The peace plan agreed by African leaders in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha last month has stalled because of resistance from hardliners on both sides of Burundi's ethnic divide.
A Burundi mediator and former Tanzanian president, Dr Julius Nyerere, is trying to break the impasse and implement a plan which involves sending troops from Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda.
The Tutsi Prime Minister, Mr Antoine Nduwayo, who addressed the nation on state radio and television late on Saturday, said a further 30 Tutsis from the camp were still missing.
"I call upon all Burundians to desist from acts of revenge. Be calm and do not take the law into your own hands," he said.
Aid workers contacted in the Burundi capital, Bujumbura, said thousands of Tutsis took to the streets yesterday to protest against the latest killings as anti Hutu feelings spread.
The ethnic crisis took a new twist on the border with Rwanda as Burundi stepped up forced repatriation of Rwandan Hutus, accused of siding with fellow Hutus in Burundi.
Mr Paul Stromberg, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Rwanda, said the total of those expelled since Friday had now reached 3,400.
About 7,000 other Rwandans had fled from the nearby camp of Ruvumo, home to 15,000 refugees, he said.
In Geneva, the UNHCR accused Tutsi military authorities in Rwanda and Burundi of collusion in the forced repatriation of thousands of the Hutu refugees.
"This operation is clearly being carried out in collusion between the authorities of Burundi and Rwanda," a UNHCR spokeswoman, Ms Christiane Berthiaume, said.
The Hutu refugees, many of whom took part in the slaughter in 1994 of up to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus, had fled Rwanda for fear they would be in danger after Tutsi rebels took over and set up a new government.