By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: September 19, 2011
NAIROBI, Kenya ? A group of gunmen clad in army fatigues and armed with military-grade weapons burst into a crowded bar in Burundi on Sunday night and opened fire, Burundian officials said, killing more than 30 people and laying bare how combustible the country is a year after a disputed election.
Esdras Ndikumana/Agence France-Presse ? Getty Images
The bodies of victims from the attack were lined up for identification.
Burundian officials immediately accused an armed opposition political party that had recently fled into the thick forests of neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, and many Burundians fear that their country could be sliding back toward war.
In the 1990s, more than 200,000 people were killed in this tiny central African nation in ethnically driven violence that soon became a dangerous free-for-all involving warring militias, rival politicians, criminal gangs and child soldiers.
According to witnesses, around 9 p.m. on Sunday, 10 gunmen descended on the Chez Les Amis bar in Gatumba, a small town near the Congo border. An African diplomat in Nairobi said that the bar was owned by a supporter of the Burundian government and that it was a well-known watering hole for fans of the governing party.
The gunmen ordered everybody in the bar to lie on the floor, and then they opened fire.
?Kill them all, kill them all, make sure there?s no survivors,? one of the gunmen said, according to an Associated Press reporter who spoke to witnesses.
Government officials said 36 people were killed and 15 wounded. After the attack, witnesses said the gunmen slipped across the Congo border, just a few miles away.
In recent months, Burundi has been haunted by a rash of mysterious killings, with bodies showing up in rivers, gagged and bound. Diplomats and human rights groups say the Burundian government has embarked on a campaign to methodically eliminate opposition supporters.
?The government has been slaughtering them like rats,? said the African diplomat, who was not authorized to speak publicly.
The attack on Sunday, he said simply, ?was payback.?
In 2008, the last of Burundi?s heavily armed rebel groups came in from the cold and agreed to form a political party. A fragile truce held until last year, when several opposition leaders claimed that the government rigged local elections, prompting the opposition leaders to abruptly withdraw from the presidential election. Agathon Rwasa, a rebel leader who briefly flirted with civilian life, suddenly disappeared, and many analysts said he had returned to the bush, in Congo, to reorganize his militia.
Ren� Lemarchand, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Florida who has written extensively about Burundi, said he believed that Mr. Rwasa?s men were most likely behind Sunday?s killings.
But, Mr. Lemarchand added: ?There is lot of flotsam and jetsam floating around. Unemployment among the young is skyrocketing. Many demobilized soldiers have become bandits, which is to say that Rwasa doesn?t have to go out of his way to recruit supporters. Many are driven into ranks by poverty and despair.?
Josh Kron contributed reporting from Kampala, Uganda.
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