Army reopens key highway

The Burundi military spokesman, Col Augustin Nzabampema, said on Thursday that the army had reopened the Bujumbura to Gitega stretch of National Highway 2, which has been closed for a week while troops hunted down armed Hutu dissidents trying to unseat the power-sharing government, state-owned Radio Burundi reported.

"Traffic is now flowing as usual along the Bujumbura-Muramvya-Gitega road," he said.

The 100-km section of the highway runs east from the capital, Bujumbura, to Gitega, the country's second-largest town.

Radio Burundi quoted Nzabampema as saying 500 rebels and 10 soldiers had been killed since the army launched its recent drive to crush the rebellion. On Tuesday, he said, the government was gaining the upper hand in the war. "The only remaining hot spot is Bugendana, in Gitega," he said. The rebels, he added, had converged into this central province from Muramvya, as army pressure mounted.

Mopping-up operations, he said, had been completed in Rutegama, Kiganda and Ndava communes in the southern province of Muramvya, some 48 km northeast of Bujumbura. "We are continuing our mine- clearance operations along roads," he added. "However, we have not yet detected other mines."

Burundi's civil war, which broke out after Tutsi soldiers assassinated President Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, has cost an estimated 250,000 lives since 1993 and caused hundreds of thousands more to flee their homes. Despite a peace accord signed in August 2000 and the establishment of a transitional government in November 2001, the Hutu rebel groups - Force nationale de liberation and the Forces pour la defense de la democratie - have continued to fight, demanding that they negotiate peace with the army which, they say, wields the real power in the country.