VOA News
14 Jul 2003, 12:34 UTC
The United States has ordered non-essential diplomats to leave Burundi, following an upsurge in fighting between the government and rebel forces.
The U.S. State Department also warned U.S. citizens to avoid the war-torn country and urged Americans already there to consider leaving while commercial flights are still available.
Around 174 people have been killed since ethnic Hutu rebels began an offensive in and around the capital, Bujumbura, last week. The insurgents from the National Liberation Forces (FLN) are Burundi's second-largest rebel group and have refused to sign a cease-fire agreement.
Burundi is quiet Monday, with no reports of fighting. On Sunday, about 30 rebels were killed and two government solders wounded in battles on the outskirts of the capital.
FLN rebels say they launched the latest fighting to force the recently installed government to negotiate with them.
In April, former President Pierre Buyoya, who is a Tutsi, handed power to President Domitien Ndayizeye, a member of the majority Hutu ethnic group, as called for in a 2000 peace accord. Burundi's main rebel group, the Forces for the Defense of Democracy, signed a truce last December.
The nation's 10-year civil war was sparked by the assassination of Burundi's only democratically elected Hutu president in 1993. In response, Hutu rebel groups took up arms against the Tutsi-domintated army. An estimated 300,000 people have died in the conflict.
Some information for this report provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
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