Vatican’s Ambassador to Burundi Slain by Unknown Assailants

The Vatican’s ambassador to Burundi was shot to death Monday in an attack the army blamed on a group of Hutu rebels who denied involvement.

Army officials in the tiny African country said papal nuncio Archbishop Michael Courtney, 58, was ambushed 25 miles south of Bujumbura, the capital, and shot three times by National Liberation Forces, or FNL, rebels.

But the FNL condemned the shooting. “We have nothing against the nuncio. We have men in the area where he was ambushed, but I swear it wasn’t us who attacked him,” spokesman Pasteur Habimana said.

“We knew where he lived.... We could have killed him if we wished. We strongly condemn those who killed him,” he said.

An estimated 300,000 people have been killed in Burundi’s decade-old civil war, in which rebels of the majority Hutu ethnic group are fighting to end the dominance of the Tutsi minority.

In October, the government and the main rebel group, the Forces for the Defense of Democracy, agreed to share power. The government has since awarded top ministerial and military posts to rebel leaders.

But the FNL has refused to negotiate and has continued to attack the capital.

“The people who committed the attack are enemies of peace in Burundi,” President Domitien Ndayizeye said in radio and television broadcasts, identifying the region where the attack took place as an FNL stronghold.

Ndayizeye said Courtney was deliberately targeted.

“It was not an accident. He was killed,” Ndayizeye told reporters. He and other officials, however, did not say what the motive might have been.

The gunmen had killed a soldier at the site just before the nuncio’s car arrived.

The army said Courtney, an Irish native, had been traveling in a diplomatic car flying the Vatican flag. The two other occupants of the vehicle, both Burundian, escaped uninjured.

“The nuncio received three bullets: One in the head behind the right ear, another in the thorax and a third in the right leg,” said Tharcisse Nzeyimana, a senior official at the Prince Louis Clinic in Bujumbura.

After learning the news, Pope John Paul II turned to prayer and offered his deep condolences, the Vatican said in a statement late Monday.