56 people were killed in Burundi when armed men in military uniform attacked a bar on Sunday.
Witnesses said the gunmen; some disguised as policemen, burst into the bar late on Sunday, forced its patrons to the ground and raked the interior with bullets.
“I heard someone some distance away shout; “Kill them all” and they opened fire,”
a survivor told the local press.
Nyaruhirira Desire the Charge d’Affaire at Rwandas embassy in Burundi told Igihe.com in a telephone interview, “No Rwandan has been injured in the attack. However, four Congolese nationals are the only foreigners that were killed in the attack.”
Burundi has enjoyed relative peace since the former hardliner rebel Forces for National Liberation (FNL) laid down their weapons and joined the government in 2009 after two decades of insurgency.
However, attacks against civilians and soldiers have intensified since elections last year were widely boycotted by the opposition. Tit-for-tat fighting between the security forces and former militia fighters risks blowing up into a full-scale rebellion, Burundi Political analysts said.
“The attackers were carrying guns and knives, some of them were dressed in police uniform,” said one survivor who was too scared to give his name.
“They really took their time. Two bullets went through my body and another two are still inside. My legs sustained grenade injuries. All I can ask for is peace. I don’t know why I should be a victim,” another survivor narrated.
“They ordered everyone to lay down on the soil and started shooting the victims one by one,” the witness said.
No group has claimed responsibility of the attack, which took place in the town of Gatumba, 16 km west of the capital, Bujumbura, and close to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo however, locals are voicing FNL for the attack.
A doctor who only gave his name as Leonard said he was totally overwhelmed. “We are lacking blood, equipment and medicine to treat all the injured,” he said.
Dead bodies had been left in a parking lot at one hospital.
Similar deadly raids have become more common in the past year, since the opposition boycotted elections, accusing President Pierre Nkurunziza’s party of fraud.
The small central African country is still struggling to emerge from 13 years of civil war that erupted in 1993 and left some 300,000 people dead.
The escalating violence has raised fears of a resumption of all-out conflict.
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