Hutu Elderly Are Primary Victims of Burundi Attack

Bodies of children, women and the elderly lay scattered in the last Hutu bastion of Burundi’s capital Thursday after an offensive by the Tutsi-dominated army against militiamen besieged there.

Tutsi soldiers from the government army in this small Central African country were accused of massacring at least 40 Hutu civilians. Most of the corpses were elderly and many were female. None were young males of the militia.

Witnesses said troops used bullets and machetes Wednesday night to slaughter whole families. The killing was not one-sided: Reporters at state radio said nine people, eight of them Tutsis, were murdered by Hutu gunmen in Musaga, a Tutsi neighborhood.

In Kamenge, the last bastion of Hutu gunmen in Bujumbura, reporters Thursday morning counted two dozen bodies. Frightened residents said more dead civilians lay inside houses and down back streets.

Nearly all the buildings journalists saw in the sprawling neighborhood that had been home to tens of thousands had their doors and windows smashed. Furniture was strewn around.

In one home, two elderly men apparently killed by bayonets were in a pool of blood on the floor. Women were wailing, and men who survived said the killing was carried out by the army.

The body of one elderly woman in another house had been mutilated.

“They were all killed because they were Hutus and because they could not flee,” said Pascal Nihimana, 31, of Kamenge.

There were at least 15 bodies in Gasenyi, a suburb near Kamenge, and two in Kinama, another Hutu area.

“Up until now the Hutus and Tutsis lived together peacefully in Gasenyi. How can we live together after this?” asked one woman near six dead women and children.

An estimated 100,000 people have been killed since October, 1993, in a power struggle between the majority Hutus and the Tutsi minority. The slaughter has raised fears the struggle could escalate into a genocide similar to the one last year in neighboring Rwanda that killed up to 1 million people.

President Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, a Hutu, praised the army’s operation in an interview on state radio.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who took part in the operation,” he said, telling Hutus it was safe to return to Kamenge.