Outbreaks of fighting continue

Fourteen people were injured when an ex-soldier hurled a grenade into Kayanza market, northern Burundi, security sources confirmed to IRIN on Tuesday.

"An argument started when the ex-soldier refused to pay a 'bicycle-taxi' owner his dues. When he [ex-soldier] saw the police coming towards them, he threw the grenade, which exploded," a security source told IRIN on Tuesday.

News organisations reported that after a police search at the ex-soldier's house, more grenades were found, along with bags of marijuana. The army spokesman, Augustin Nzabampema, confirmed the incident, but asserted that there had been no casualties.

He also told IRIN that reports that 27 people were killed at dawn in Kirombwe, Kanyosha commune, southeast of the capital, Bujumbura, were "not true".

The local Radio Publique Africaine (RPA) had reported 27 people were killed in Kanyosha early on Monday, but it could not ascertain whether they were civilians or soldiers. It quoted "certain sources" as saying they were civilians going to Bujumbura market, adding, however, that the Kanyosha administration categorically said that no one had been living in Kirombwe.

"All the residents fled fighting between the army a week ago," RPA quoted the commune administrator as saying, and that no civilian would dare venture into Kirombwe.

Nzabampema said sporadic fighting was going on, but "it is nothing serious as such".

Meanwhile, at least 20,000 people had fled continued fighting in parts of Burundi since early March, the United States Committee for Refugees (USCR) said in a statement last week. It noted that despite the peace agreement reached in mid-2000, fighting had continued, uprooting an estimated 150,000 or more Burundians during the past 15 months.

The latest violence erupted on 11 March, some 20 km from Bujumbura, in the hilly region of Nyambuye, where several dozen people were reportedly killed, it said.

It said that fighting between the government army and the rebel group Forces nationales de liberation had continued to disrupt lives of tens of thousands during the past weeks, with some reports estimating that as many as 80,000 civilians had been displaced since January, USCR said.

Many newly displaced families were living in a northern suburb of Bujumbura, where they had sought shelter in church facilities and with family and friends, it noted.

The World Food Programme (WFP) also reported on Friday that the security situation remained volatile in Bujumbura Rural and Bubanza provinces. The agency said in its weekly emergency update that following an ambush in Musigati commune, in Bubanza Province to the north of Bujumbura, a large part of the population in the area had fled to Bubanza town.

Military operations in Bujumbura Rural in the area of Isare commune had prompted many of those who had recently returned home from the Mont Sion site in Bujumbura Mairie to flee again, WFP said. It added that scheduled Seeds Protection Ration distributions were cancelled at the Mubone, Rubirizi and Kora sites, north of Bujumbura.