28 Corpses Discovered in Burundi
By ALOYS NIYOYITA
.c The Associated Press
BUJUMBURA, Burundi (AP) - Government soldiers and aid workers discovered 28 corpses Friday as fighting between Hutu rebels and the Tutsi-dominated army raged on in the capital of this central African nation.
Since fighting erupted in Bujumbura on Monday, an estimated 170 people have been killed and 6,000 to 7,000 others have been forced to flee their homes, according to a U.N. report. The estimate was reported Thursday after a closed-door briefing to the U.N. Security Council on the situation in Burundi.
Aid workers found 17 bodies - including four children and their parents - buried near a house in the southern Bujumbura neighborhood of Kinanira, said an aid worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Army spokesman Augustin Nzabampema said government soldiers later found 11 bodies on the dusty streets in the same residential neighborhood, which has been beset by the fighting.
``They were all wearing civilian clothes. It's very difficult to distinguish whether they were civilians or rebels,'' Nzabampema said.
On Friday, government troops attacked rebel positions in the hills surrounding Bujumbura with mortars and helicopter gunships. The rebels retaliated by firing rockets and mortars into the capital.
Five children were wounded by rockets fired into a northern area of the lakeside city, said local government official Jean de Dieu Niyongabo.
Up to 200 wounded people have been admitted to hospitals, said Sunil Saigal, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator.
The fighting in the capital began Monday when rebels of the largest faction of National Liberation Forces, or FNL, attacked southern neighborhoods of Bujumbura.
The army appeared to have forced many of the insurgents to the outskirts of the city, but pockets of rebels continued to clash with the army in Musaga neighborhood, 2.5 miles south of the city center. Nzabampema said the fighting was concentrated in the hills overlooking Musaga.
``We will not let ourselves be killed like flies,'' said rebel spokesman Pasteur Habimana.
The Security Council strongly condemned the rebel offensive Thursday and called on the insurgents to enter serious negotiations with the government.
The civil war erupted in October 1993 after Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country's first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, a member of the Hutu majority. At least 200,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in the conflict.
