Citation
BUJUMBURA, March 8 (AFP) - Displaced people in northeast Burundi, torn by ethnic conflict, massacred 21 civilians after the murder of a local accountant, the national news agency reported Wednesday.
Six people, including two young woman, attacked the accountant from the Muramba district in Muyinga province, bordering on Tanzania and Rwanda, which is also troubled by ethnic strife between its majority Hutus and minority Tutsis.
The agency said he was tied up and decapitated. On Sunday, displaced people from the nearby Nyarunazi district launched a search for the accountant's body, slaughtered 21 people and razed seven houses to the ground.
The agency did not say to which ethnic group the victims belonged.
Muyinga province has been the scene of ethnic clashes since its Hutu governor was murdered by another Hutu on August 26. Authorities in Bujumbura have blamed much of the violence on extremist Hutus led from exile in Zaire by a former cabinet minister.
Burundi, where the Tutsis dominate the armed forces, has a broad-based coalition government formed in a bid to stave off mass bloodshed. In October 1993, more than 50,000 people died in massacres sparked by the assassination of the country's first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, elected in the country's first multiparty elections that year.
dn-hn/nb/ss AFP AFP
