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BUJUMBURA, Jan 4 (AFP) - Two government officials have been killed in northern Burundi in the latest of a string of attacks targeting officials and politicians, the government said Wednesday.
The administrator of Bwambarangwe, in northeastern Kirundo province, was killed when a grenade was thrown at his house Tuesday. The administrator of Mubimbi, 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the capital Bujumbura, was shot dead in his office the same day, government officials said.
They did not give the names of the victims but said they were Hutus. In both incidents, the killers fled.
The attacks came a few weeks after the administrators of Kanyosha and Mpanda were killed in similar attacks.
Meanwhile, the mainly-Hutu inhabitants of Kamenge and Kinama, two districts in the north of Bujumbura, have been staying at home since Monday, fearing for their safety if they venture into the centre of town.
Residents stopped buses from going into the centre.
Government sources said they had organised a meeting Wednesday with the residents and insisted they did not want to see a "Balkanisation" of the city into ethnically divided zones.
Burundi, like its northern neighbour Rwanda, is mainly populated by Hutus but was from 1960 until last year ruled by Tutsi governments backed by Tutsi-staffed armed forces.
The tension in the country rose dramatically on December when Jean Minani, a Hutu accused of helping to organise massacres of Tutsis in 1993, was elected speaker of the National Assembly.
President Sylvestre Ntibantunganya said in late December he had found a solution to the crisis and that Minani would be given other functions but this has not yet happened.
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AFP AFP
