The Foreign Minister was already advising Belgian nationals not to travel to the country that has been the scene of escalating violence over the past couple of months.
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The army says those killed in Friday’s violence were criminals, but residents accuse the security forces of extra-judicial killings.
The government, however, said that “the people found in the streets are attackers who have been killed by the security”, Karerwa Ndenzako, a government spokesman, told The New York Times.
Burundi, whose crisis pits supporters of President Pierre Nkurunziza against those opposed to him serving a third term in office, rejected the criticism of its security forces.
ADDIS ABABA Burundi (Xinhua) – Re-iterating its deep concern about the situation in Burundi, the African Union (AU) has called for an inclusive dialogue to find a solution to the crisis in that country.
“The events of last week confirmed the extent to which violence and intimidation are catapulting the country back to the past – to Burundi’s deeply troubled, dark and horrendously violent past”, High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein said.
Adama Dieng, a United Nations adviser for the prevention of genocide, last week warned that both the government and the opposition were manipulating ethnic tensions in Burundi, pitting Hutus and Tutsis against each other.
The AU continues to work to that end with other members of the global community, including the United Nations and relevant bilateral and multilateral partners, it said.
“The commission encourages defense and security forces to be characterized by professionalism and neutrality”. Those attacks were followed by what some analysts say were retaliatory actions by the military in some of the city’s neighborhoods, bringing the death toll to 87.
The latest call comes following the attacks on 11 December against several military camps in Bujumbura, which killed dozens of people in the course of heavy fighting prompting the UN Secretary-General to condemn the attacks and add that “such acts of violence can lead to a further destabilization of the situation in crisis-torn Burundi”. The government said the gunmen had aimed to seize weapons but had failed.
During the attacks, nine soldiers and 12 policemen were also injured.
Political violence persists throughout Burundi following the country’s contested elections, an attempted coup and the controversy over Nkurunziza standing for and winning a third term, the warning said.
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Additionally, they also reported that almost 220,000 people have fled Burundi and an additional 15,000 people have been displaced within the country since April.
