A senior army officer and a motorcyclist and two members of an armed group have been killed in separate incidents in Burundi, officials said on Thursday, a day after the latest flareup of violence in the country’s year-long crisis.
Tit-for-tat killings by supporters of President Pierre Nkurunziza and his political opponents have raised concerns that Burundi could slide back into conflict, after the country emerged from an ethnically fueled civil war in 2005.
In one incident on Wednesday, gunmen ambushed Colonel Emmanuel Buzubona as he traveled on the back of a motorbike to his home in Bujumbura, the capital, according to Moise Nkurunziza, deputy police spokesman.
“The senior officer tried to flee but he didn’t make it because the attackers finished him off by throwing a grenade,” Nkurunziza told Reuters. He said the motorcyclist also died.
The motive was not immediately clear.
Buzubona’s neighbors said he had returned in September from Tanzania, where he had been an instructor at a military college for officers from the East African Community bloc. He was awaiting a new assignment, army spokesman Gaspard Baratuza said.