Intense fighting reported to have claimed 50 lives

More than 50 people are believed to have been killed at the weekend during rebel attacks on civilians in two districts and subsequent clashes between rebels and the Burundi army, according to diplomatic and media sources. A diplomatic source in Bujumbura told IRIN on Monday that it was hard to verify the information, especially the number of casualties, since it is "not easy to go to the affected areas" but confirmed "there was hard combat on Saturday and Sunday" and the situation was tense. "Today (Monday) it is quiet and there is no problem," he said. The diplomat added that residents of Burundi were "waiting for the outcome of the human rights officials set to investigate the killings". Reuters news agency quoted officials and eyewitnesses as saying that some 58 people had died following the attacks on the districts of Musaga and Mutanga when the rebels attacked minority Tutsi populations, burning their homes and shooting them as they fled. The agency reported that 33 civilians, most of them children, had been murdered in the southern district of Musaga while another five were killed in the northern district of Mutanga. Army claims to have killed 20 rebels Defence Minister Alfred Nkurunziza, quoted by Reuters, said his forces had the better of the fighting in the early hours of Sunday, forcing the rebels to pull out of the capital. "They killed innocent civilians but they also had many fighters killed. We further saw that we killed 20 rebels and we think we killed even more because they pick up the bodies of their dead fighters. Only one soldier was injured in the clashes," Nkurunziza said. President Pierre Buyoya expressed shock at the attacks and pledged to "crack down on the rebels", Reuters added. Arusha peace talks postponed The Tanzanian mediators of Burundi's peace talks in Arusha, the next round of which was scheduled for 6 September, have postponed them by a week to give all parties more time for "extensive and intensive consultations", AFP news agency on Monday quoted Hashim Mbita, an aide to talks coordinator and former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, as saying. Meanwhile, Reuters news agency reported that the talks were postponed because Nyerere was in ill health and expected to travel to Britain this week for treatment. It said he had also cancelled a meeting with President Buyoya that was planned for Sunday, citing health reasons. EU deplores violent clashes and civilian suffering Meanwhile, the European Union has deplored recent clashes between the army and the rebels which have resulted in "very many civilian victims" and expressed concern at the reprisals taken against civilians. "In particular, it calls on the government of Burundi to work in close collaboration with observers from the United Nations Human Rights Office, and set up an internal inquiry to establish any responsibility of the army involved and to bring the latter to justice," an EU Presidency statement said. "The Union draws the attention of the government of Burundi to the fragility of the final phases of the Arusha peace process and to the dangers that such incidents represent", it added. The Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie-forces pour la defense de la democratie (CNDD-FDD), in a statement received by IRIN on Monday, called for a "neutral international inquiry" to determine "collective and individual" responsibilities for the recent civilian massacres in Bujumbura Rural, including the killing of more than 250 Hutus in Ruziba. The inquiry should cover other provinces as well as Bujumbura, the statement said. UN report warns of rising malnutrition risk A recent joint crop and food assessment by the government, FAO and WFP has forecast a 22 percent shortfall pulse production and a 10 percent drop in cereals compared with last year as a result of poor rains and an army warm invasion earlier in the 'B' season, according to a recent report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). Since most of the annual bean and cereal production is obtained in this season and WFP shortages have resulted in reduced food distributions, global malnutrition rates are expected to rise in certain parts of the country by the end of the year, it said. Surveys throughout most provinces of children under 5 years had already indicated earlier this year that the malnutrition situation, though improving, was "still precarious and compounded by the poor health status of the population", the report added. The total number of internally displaced people (IDPs) in Burundi stood at 617,108 as of 19 August, with a preponderance of IDPs in the districts of Bubanza and Bujumbura (Mairie and Rural), according to UNOCHA's report. Those IDPs, it stated, accounted for a majority of the 646,072 "affected population" requiring humanitarian assistance; the remainder comprised 22,161 refugees, mostly from DRC but including 1,671 Rwandans, and 6,803 unaccompanied children.