GATUMBA, Burundi
Families in Burundi buried their loved ones on Tuesday following the recent deadly rebel attack on Burundi from neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.
At least 20 people were killed
in Burundi following an attack by a rebel group based in the neighboring DRC, a
Burundian government spokesman said Saturday.
The burials took place at the
St. François Xavier parish church, where a service was held to honor the
victims.
"I went out to see my
cousin who lives on the third avenue, I found that he had been massacred with
his children," said Jean Niyonzima, a relative of a victim.
The attack targeted nine homes
on Friday evening in the western town of Vugizo, close to the Lake Tanganyika
border with DRC, according to the Burundian government.
"Frankly speaking, this
is nothing short of sheer terror. A pregnant woman begged them to spare her
life, but in the end it was all in vain," Burundian Minister of Interior
Martin Niteretse said on Tuesday.
RED-Tabara, a Burundian armed
rebel group based in South Kivu, eastern DRC, claimed responsibility for the
attack in a post on the X platform, formerly Twitter.
The group, which denied having
targeted civilians, claimed to have killed nine soldiers and a police officer.
Burundian authorities consider
RED-Tabara a terrorist movement. The group first appeared in 2011 and has been
accused of a string of attacks in Burundi since 2015.
In August last year, Burundi
deployed soldiers to eastern DRC as part of a regional force invited by Congo
to tackle the resurgence of the M23 rebel group there.
Some observers believed that
the Burundi troops from the seven-nation East African Community force would be
used to crush RED-Tabara.
However, the East African
Regional force is currently being withdrawn in phases from the violence-plagued
eastern Congo following complaints from locals and authorities that instead of
disarming the rebels, the forces were cohabiting with them.
The Burundi Human Rights
Initiative said Burundi had secretly deployed hundreds of troops and militia to
the DRC in 2021 to fight RED-Tabara.
The impact of that secret
deployment is not clear.
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