Rebels Kill 2 U.N. Staffers in Burundi

Two relief officials, from the U.N. Children’s Fund and the U.N.’s World Food Program, were shot to death by ethnic Hutu rebels in southern Burundi on Tuesday, U.N. officials said.

Luis Zuniga, a 52-year-old Chilean who headed UNICEF’s Burundi operation, and 34-year-old WFP logistics officer Saskia Von Meijenfeldt, from the Netherlands, were killed during a visit to a camp for displaced people.

A Burundian army spokesman, Col. Longin Minani, said the killings took place at the Muzye camp near Rutana, nearly 90 miles southeast of Bujumbura, the capital, and that seven other people were also killed.

Michele Quintaglie of the WFP said the six members of a U.N. team visiting the camp were lined up against a wall shortly after their arrival and robbed by the rebels, who then walked away.

“One rebel turned around and said, ‘Why should we let these people live?’,” she said.

“He took his gun, put it to the head of the UNICEF worker and executed him. Then he took his gun again, put it to the head of the WFP worker and executed her.”

Quintaglie said that the rebels had killed four government soldiers from the convoy’s military escort before turning on the U.N. officials and that only the intervention of one of the other team members prevented further killings.

She said that the shooting attracted more rebels and soldiers and that, in the confusion, the other U.N. workers managed to flee.

More than 150,000 people have been killed in six years of civil war between Hutu rebels and the Tutsi-dominated army in Burundi, and fighting has intensified recently in the hills around the capital and in the south of the country.