{Burundi authorities have arrested six people in connection with the murder of the country’s environment minister, the prosecutor general said Saturday.}<\/p>\n
Emmanuel Niyonkuru, 54, the country’s water, environment and planning minister, was shot dead shortly after midnight on New Year’s Eve in the most high-profile killing since Burundi’s political crisis began nearly two years ago.<\/p>\n
Police were quick to term the killing an “assassination” although the motive for the attack was not immediately clear.<\/p>\n
Prosecutor general Sylvestre Nyandwi told journalists that the minister had been shot in the head as he returned home in the capital Bujumbura.<\/p>\n
“After this foul act, investigations began quickly and six suspected perpetrators were apprehended, including four men and two women,” he said.<\/p>\n
Nyandwi said investigations were still ongoing and did not reveal the identities of those arrested nor their alleged motives.<\/p>\n
Niyonkuru is the first cabinet minister to be killed but other senior regime figures have been targeted since the crisis erupted over President Pierre Nkurunziza’s bid to run for a third term in April 2015.<\/p>\n
General Adolphe Nshimirimana, considered Nkurunziza’s right-hand man, was killed in August 2015. Almost a year later former government minister and spokeswoman Hafsa Mossi was killed by gunmen in her car.<\/p>\n
Other attacks have failed, with senior presidential advisor Willy Nyamitwe, a spokesman widely regarded as the public face of the government, escaping an ambush by a group of gunmen as he returned to his Bujumbura home in November.<\/p>\n
Burundi has commonly blamed neighbouring Rwanda for the attacks.<\/p>\n
At least 500 people have been killed and 300,000 have fled the country since the unrest began as protesters — and then military coup-plotters — fought against Nkurunziza’s third mandate.<\/p>\n
UN and NGO human rights reports have raised fears that Burundi’s political crisis might take on an ethnic dimension, warning of the potential for genocide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Burundi authorities have arrested six people in connection with the murder of the country’s environment minister, the prosecutor general said Saturday.} Emmanuel Niyonkuru, 54, the country’s water, environment and planning minister, was shot dead shortly after midnight on New Year’s Eve in the most high-profile killing since Burundi’s political crisis began nearly two years ago. […]<\/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":[228],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-31662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-afp"],"bylines":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","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":71}],"contributors":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","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":71}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31662","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=31662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31662"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=31662"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=31662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}