Post-Coup Slayings by Army Reported in Central Burundi

The military killed at least 50 people in central Burundi over the weekend--apparently in response to a Hutu rebel attack on the area--in the first reported massacre since Burundi’s Tutsi-dominated army carried out a coup last week.

Thursday, the overwhelmingly Tutsi military ousted the country’s weak, ethnically mixed coalition government headed by a Hutu president and replaced him with a retired major, Pierre Buyoya, a Tutsi who served as president from 1987 to 1993.

The slayings over the past week in Gitega, 50 miles east of Bujumbura and Burundi’s second-largest town, inched up the death toll in the ethnic conflict that has pulverized this small Central African country, where more than 150,000 lives have been lost since late 1993.

The killing in Burundi has centered primarily on the countryside, where Hutu attacks and army reprisals have left thousands of civilians dead.

Gitega, which boasts a mix of Hutus and Tutsis, has been especially volatile in recent months. Last week, Hutu rebels killed more than 300 Tutsis in a district refugee camp.

Burundian officials said that Saturday’s violence was initiated by Hutu rebels who set fire to a rice research center and a coffee factory in Gitega. It was unclear Monday how many people were killed in the rebel assault.

But the officials, who asked not to be identified, reported that soldiers spotted the rebels and set fire to a hillside, hoping to burn out the guerrillas.

Meanwhile, troops shot at least 50 people, and some officials estimated that the death toll may have been as high as 150.