Published January 13, 2015
Gunmen hurled a grenade at a bar frequented by army officers, killing four people in an attack authorities said Monday was an attempt to undermine Burundi's government.
Police said they were searching for suspects in the attack Sunday evening in the northern Ngagara district of Burundi's capital, Bujumbura. Twenty people were injured.
"This is an act of sabotage," Mayor Desire Parfait Ndibanje told The Associated Press. "Some people want to show that this administration can't control people's security."
He said the attack was linked to the central African country's tense political situation. Eight people, including a former vice president, were arrested earlier this month for allegedly plotting a coup against the elected government.
Last month, two grenade blasts in bars killed seven people in Bujumbura, and five rockets were launched into the capital, seriously wounding one person in a home.
Burundi is emerging from a dozen years of conflict between the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsis, who had dominated the government, economy and military since independence from Belgium in 1962.
The conflict killed more than 250,000 people, most of them civilians who died from disease and hunger. The war started in October 1993, when Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country's first democratically elected president, a Hutu.
All of Burundi's main Hutu rebel groups signed peace deals, leading to a constitution that includes a formula for ethnic power-sharing and democratic elections last year.
Only the rebel National Liberation Force has not signed the deals. Although it has entered into negotiations with the government, the group has continued attacks.
https://www.foxnews.com/story/4-killed-in-grenade-attack-in-burundi