{Nairobi: A senior Burundi army officer and ally of President Pierre Nkurunziza was shot dead in the capital on Tuesday, army sources said, the latest in a series of killings in an almost year-long crisis that risks plunging the African nation back into war.}<\/p>\n
Lieutenant Colonel Darius Ikurakure was shot in the Defence Ministry by a man who then fled, one soldier told Reuters. Two other sources gave similar accounts. <\/p>\n
There was no official statement. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the reported assassination. “Such acts of violence risk exacerbating the current crisis in Burundi,” Ban’s spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters.<\/p>\n
“The Secretary-General reiterates his appeal for Burundians to resolve their differences peacefully and to engage immediately in an inclusive and transparent political dialogue.” Tit-for-tat killings of pro-government and opposition figures have sparked international concerns that Burundi, which emerged from an ethnically charged civil war a decade ago, could slide back into conflict. <\/p>\n
The crisis has rattled a region with a history of ethnic fighting, including neighbouring Rwanda which suffered a genocide in 1994. <\/p>\n
“Many were at home for their lunch …,” one of the army sources, who asked not be identified, said. “That is why he was probably not seen and arrested.”<\/p>\n
Ikurakure was commander of a combat engineering battalion based in Muzinda, northeast of the capital, Bujumbura. <\/p>\n
He was seen as close to Nkurunziza, with whom he fought as a rebel during the civil war that ended in 2005. Opponents accused him of being behind arbitrary arrests and killings in some areas of Bujumbura over the last year. <\/p>\n
The government says it only arrests those behind violence, and dismisses accusations of extra-judicial killing. Burundi’s crisis erupted in April when Nkurunziza said he was bidding for a third presidential term. His opponents said the move was unconstitutional but he went on to win a disputed election three months later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Nairobi: A senior Burundi army officer and ally of President Pierre Nkurunziza was shot dead in the capital on Tuesday, army sources said, the latest in a series of killings in an almost year-long crisis that risks plunging the African nation back into war.} Lieutenant Colonel Darius Ikurakure was shot in the Defence Ministry by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[2488],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-standard-media"],"bylines":[{"id":2488,"name":"STANDARD MEDIA","slug":"standard-media","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2488,"name":"STANDARD MEDIA","slug":"standard-media","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24089"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24089"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}