Burundi fighting deprives refugees of food aid
NAIROBI, March 4 (Reuters) - Violence including rapes and killings is denying food aid to more than 10,000 Burundians uprooted by a recent outbreak of fighting, the United Nations warned on Thursday.
Aid workers say security has improved in parts of the central African country, where rebels and government have made progress towards ending a decade-long civil war, but many western areas remain dangerous.
"Continued insecurity has forced WFP to cancel last week's planned emergency food aid distributions to 13,000 people who had recently fled their homes," said a statement issued by the World Food Programme (WFP) in Nairobi.
"Targeted killings, rape of women, armed robbery and looting of households are continuing. In many cases, when people flee the fighting, they must leave their homes without taking any food with them."
The war between Burundi's politically dominant Tutsi minority and rebels from the Hutu majority has killed some 300,000 people since 1993, when Tutsi extremists assassinated the nation's first democratically elected Hutu president.
Tenuous talks to end hostilities recently incorporated many former Hutu rebels into a power-sharing government. Both army and rebels have been accused of committing attacks on civilians and other human rights abuses.
One rebel group, the Forces for National Liberation, has repeatedly declined to join the government and is still fighting government troops, while banditry remains a problem on many roads in the country of 6.5 million.
03/04/04 10:29 ET
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