World IN BRIEF / BURUNDI : Hutu Rebels Kill Civilians, Fight Army

Ethnic Hutu rebels attacked Burundi’s capital in brutal overnight raids, killing 38 civilians and taking on the army in fierce fighting that killed 20 rebels, officials said. Gunfire and mortar explosions echoed around Bujumbura from midnight to dawn after rebel units moved into two districts of the city and attacked the minority Tutsi population, burning down homes and shooting civilians as they fled. Most of the victims were children. A Reuters reporter saw the bodies of a dozen young children who had been shot dead, and another who was so badly burned that only his head was recognizable as that of a child. President Pierre Buyoya, who seized power in a 1996 coup, said he was shocked by the attacks and pledged to crack down on the rebels. “Now we need to multiply actions in order to really punish these genocidal terrorists,” Buyoya said at the city’s main airport as he returned from a visit to South Africa. In neighboring Rwanda in 1994, the Hutu-led army and militias butchered some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in just 100 days.