Massacres Burundi

A weekend massacre of more than 200 Hutu men, women and children reignited tribal fighting in Burundi and brought reprisal slayings of scores of ethnic Tutsis, the government and diplomats said. A government official put the heaviest toll in the capital's Kamenge and Kanima districts.

The death toll in tribal massacres sweeping Burundi may top that of a 1972 genocide in which 150,000 people died, a government minister from the central African nation said Friday. Foreign Minister Paul Munyembari said anarchy prevailed in the country a month after soldiers murdered President Melchior Ndadaye in a coup that later collapsed. Ndadaye, 40, was the first elected president of Burundi and the first president from the Hutu tribe. "The army still roams the countryside.

Tribal massacres sweeping Burundi have littered the countryside with corpses since a military coup a week ago, witnesses said. Figures quoted by military officials, Burundi citizens and reporters suggested that the death toll will run into the thousands. The reporters, who flew across the Central African country, saw villages on fire, dozens of corpses and rampaging groups of peasants armed with spears, machetes and knives.

A tribal blood bath in northern Burundi has left an eerie, near-empty land of scorched homesteads and abandoned villages. All but a few of the people of this fertile and once thickly populated district of Central Africa have fled or been killed. Those that remain say the dead must number in the tens of thousands.

Burundi's leader said Thursday that his soldiers killed civilians in reprisals for the massacres of rival tribesmen, and he said the death toll from ethnic violence in the central African nation could be more than 5,000. The leader, Maj. Pierre Buyoya, was quoted on state-run Radio Burundi, monitored in neighboring Rwanda. More than 41,000 Burundians have fled to Rwanda to escape fighting between the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi, who control Burundi's government and military.

Refugees fleeing tribal violence in Burundi say that the army took part in the slaughter of thousands of people in that small, central African nation, a U.N. official said Tuesday. At least 5,000 people have been reported killed in massacres during fighting between two tribes. Code Cisse, the representative in Rwanda of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said that about 38,000 refugees have fled Burundi into neighboring Rwanda since the killing broke out Aug. 14.

Refugees fleeing tribal massacres in Burundi on Sunday gave gruesome accounts of the slaughter and suggested that thousands have been killed. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said that at least 30,000 people have fled across the border into Rwanda. "Those who fled may be less numerous than those who died," survivor Antoine Mpabonimana said. She said three of her children were bayoneted to death by troops who took part in the killings.

Order has been restored after tribal massacres in Burundi that sent up to 10,000 refugees fleeing into neighboring Rwanda, diplomats said Friday. It was not known how many people died in the conflict between the Tutsi and Hutu tribes. The official Burundian news agency ABP said the toll appeared to be very great but gave no numbers. The Hutu is the majority tribe in Burundi, but the minority Tutsi controls the military and rules the country.