A senior army officer and a motorcyclist and two members of an armed group have been killed in separate incidents in Burundi, officials said on Thursday, a day after the latest flareup of violence in the country’s year-long crisis.


In one incident on Wednesday, gunmen ambushed Colonel Emmanuel Buzubona as he travelled on the back of a motorbike to his home in Bujumbura, the capital, according to Moise Nkurunziza, deputy police spokesman.

“The senior officer tried to flee but he didn’t make it because the attackers finished him off by throwing a grenade,” Nkurunziza said

He said the motorcyclist also died. The motive was not immediately clear.

In a separate incident on Wednesday, soldiers on patrol killed two people in a clash with an armed group in Kivumu village in Mugamba southern district, 60 km southeast of Bujumbura, said Christian Nkurunziza, regional governor of the districk where Mugamba is located.

“As they were patrolling, soldiers exchanged fire with an armed group of eight men, killing two people,” he said.

Four members of the CNDD-FDD party were killed in the same village last week.

Tit-for-tat killings by supporters of President Pierre Nkurunziza and his political opponents have raised concerns that Burundi could slide back into conflict, after the country emerged from an ethnically fuelled civil war in 2005.

More than 400 people have been killed since Nkurunziza said he would run for a third term last year.