Brig. Gen. Athanase Kararuza was ambushed Monday morning by gunmen who fired on his vehicle with rocket-propelled grenades when he dropped his daughter at school in the Bujumbura neighborhood of Gihosha, said military spokesman Col. Gaspard Baratuza.
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A policeman walks at the crime scene where Burundian General Athanase Kararuza was attacked and killed by unknown gunmen in Ntahangwa commune, north of the capital Bujumbura, April 25, 2016.
“All such acts of violence serve no goal other than to worsen the already volatile situation in Burundi”, Dujarric said.
The United Nations says more than 400 people have been killed and more than 250,000 have fled the country.
As a step to defuse the crisis, former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa – heading a mediating team under the East African Community trade bloc which Burundi belongs to – said on Sunday he will be convening talks among all the parties in the dispute between May 2-6 in the Tanzanian city of Arusha.
“They attacked him with rockets and grenades, his security detail tried to respond but unfortunately General Kararuza and his wife were killed”, the source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A Tutsi general was gunned down in Burundi on Monday, the latest bloodshed in a year of violent political turmoil that has now prompted a preliminary probe by global prosecutors into a litany of atrocities.
His move sparked weeks of street protests and a failed coup, but he went on to win an election in July that was slammed as anti-constitutional by civil society and the opposition.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the assassination of the general, who until September 2015 was the deputy commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Central African Republic, as a “tragic loss”. Investigators have received reports of crimes including “killing, imprisonment, torture (and) rape” in Burundi, according to a statement by Bensouda on the ICC website.
The initial probe is aimed at determining whether there is enough evidence to proceed to a full-blown investigation, which could result in charges against any alleged leaders of the violence.
There have been several calls to avert genocide in Burundi and a repeat of its 1993-2006 civil war.
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Such attacks are never claimed, with both sides systematically denying any responsibility. Experts fear the recent violence during the political crisis in Burundi may reopen old ethnic wounds and risk causing civil war.
