– ‘Corpses litter the streets’ –
Rwandan President Paul Kagame has accused Burundi’s leaders of carrying out “massacres” on their people in his most critical speech yet of the crisis in the troubled neighbouring state.
“People die every day, corpses litter the streets… How can the leaders allow their population to be massacred from morning to night?” Kagame said, speaking in Kinyarwanda on Friday.
Relations between Rwanda and Burundi are tense, with Bujumbura accusing Kigali of backing those who oppose President Pierre Nkurunziza’s controversial third term in office.
Burundi has been hit by waves of violence since Nkurunziza launched his successful bid to win a third term, with bodies found dumped in the streets on a nearly daily basis.
People in largely opposition areas have fled Bujumbura, leaving key districts that have seen some of the worst recent violence almost empty.
The security warnings have sparked intense fear.
“I was terrified, I understood that this time they would kill every last one of us,” said Marie, a secretary in her forties who fled Mutakura on Saturday, taking her five children to a relative’s house in a calmer part of the capital.
But apart from the bar attack, the city was otherwise reported to be largely calm, the mayor said.
At least 200 people have died in turmoil since April and 200,000 have fled the country, sparking fears that the violence could spiral into mass bloodletting.
“Inflammatory rhetoric deployed in recent days by some government officials and President Nkurunziza’s planned security crackdown this weekend are increasing the risk of an outbreak of mass violence,” the US said Saturday.
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