No fewer than 12 people, including a senior army officer, were killed while several others were left wounded in a roadside ambush in central Burundi, administrative and medical sources revealed yesterday.
According to the Police, about eight people were killed late Sunday when bandits set upon four vehicles near Muramvya, a provincial capital about 50 kilometres (31 miles) northeast of the main city of Bujumbura.
However, residents and official government and hospital sources told correspondents that the real toll was higher and that a child was among the dead.
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‘Ten people were killed on the spot and two others, including a little girl, succumbed to their injuries,’ an administrative source told newsmen on condition of anonymity.
A medical official, also requesting anonymity, said ‘there were 11 bodies in the Muramvya morgue’ while a twelfth victim was in Bujumbura after being transferred to a hospital there.
President Evariste Ndayishimiye said those responsible must be brought to justice.
‘We are saddened to see Burundi once again lose its children to bandits,’ he said on Twitter.
A Burundian army officer, Colonel Onesphore Nizigiyimana, and one of his daughters were among the victims, according to the administrative source, and relatives of the victim.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK