The Burundian military confirmed on Saturday at least 150 refugees were killed and 110 others injured when Burundian Hutu rebels attacked a UN camp housing Tutsi refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to reports reaching Nairobi from Bujumbura.
An additional 30 people died in the hospital following the late Friday attack on the refugee camp near the border with the DRC, the reports said.
The camp sheltered Congolese ethnic Tutsi refugees, known as the Banyamulenge, who fled fighting in the eastern town of Bukavu earlier this year.
Burundi's Hutu rebel National Liberation Forces (FNL) claimed responsibility for the attack on Friday night on the Gatumba camp, which is located 20 km west of the capital Bujumbura and just four km from the DRC border.
The FNL is a tiny Hutu faction in Burundi, and has rejected the entire peace process in the tiny central African country. Other Hutu factions have signed a power-sharing deal earlier this month in South Africa, aimed at paving the way to elections in the country.
An estimated 300,000 minority Tutsis and political moderates from the Hutu majority were killed in the 100-day massacre in 1993 organized by the extremist Hutu government then in power.
The Arusha peace accord signed in 2000 set up a transitional government in Burundi, due to hand over power to a newly-elected president in the elections planned for later this year.
(Xinhua News Agency August 15, 2004)
