GITEGA, Burundi (Apr 16, 1996 2:30 p.m. EDT) - Nearly 300 civilians have died in a wave of Hutu rebel attacks across Burundi in the last two weeks, U.N. and army sources in the central African country said Tuesday.
The dead included a commando colonel killed in a raid Sunday by more than 100 well-armed Hutu rebels in Bukirasazi commune, south of the main central town of Gitega, sources said.
"We had been brought in to reinforce Gitega from (the capital) Bujumbura. We were outnumbered," said a wounded paratrooper at the Gitega hospital.
The sources said the rebels Sunday slaughtered 15 families abducted April 8 at Gitanga in the neighboring southeastern province of Rutanga.
The attacks were among 21 separate incidents across the tiny country that killed at least 323 people between April 3 and April 14, the sources said. Ninety percent of the dead were civilians.
Rebels of the Hutu majority began an offensive against the Tutsi-dominated army in the south last month but have also attacked on a line running from the northeast to the southwest.
A senior police officer announced Tuesday that because many rebels were infiltrating from Zaire, Burundi had closed its border crossing with Zaire at Gatumba, northwest of Bujumbura.
U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said Monday he feared the violence in Burundi would degenerate into genocide like that which tore apart neighboring Rwanda two years ago.
"I feel that there is a real danger of the situation in Burundi degenerating to the point where it might erupt into a genocidal conflict," he told the Security Council in a letter.
On the political front, serious differences were evident between Burundi's Hutu president, Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, and the Tutsi prime minister, Antoine Nduwayo, the U.N. chief added.
Boutros-Ghali has suggested the United Nations place standby forces in neighboring countries or members earmark such forces, ready to intervene in case of mass violence.
More than 100,000 people have been killed in Burundi since 1993.
Burundi has the same ethnic mix as neighboring Rwanda where up to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in genocide by Hutu troops, militiamen and mobs two years ago. The U.N. forces were reduced to a token presence at the start of the slaughter.
Caniseus Mbonyingingo, a doctor at Gitega Hospital, told Reuters that for the past three weeks he had received dozens of military casualties and many wounded civilians.
"The rebels hit Tutsis first and the military at the same time," the doctor said. "Often they do both together and we're finding that they don't discriminate between Hutus or Tutsis."
In the hospital, six-year old Jean-Claude Minani and his 14-year-old sister lay wounded after a rebel attack on their home.
"Rebels made us lie down on the floor of our hut and then executed us," said the boy's sister. "We said that we were Hutus and would help them if they didn't kill us, but they just lined us up on the ground, stood over us with guns and opened fire."