Burundi grenade blasts kill at least five, injures 50

Security officials keep watch outside the Prince Regent Charles Hospital as Burundi’s Prime Minister Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni visits the victims of an explosion that killed at least five people, in Bujumbura, Burundi yesterday.

Explosions killed at least five people and injured 50 in Burundi’s largest city Bujumbura on Monday night, the prime minister and a health worker said after the latest in a string of attacks in the east African country. The Interior Ministry said on Twitter that “unidentified terrorists” were responsible. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the grenade attacks. Two grenade explosions hit a bus parking lot in the city centre, according to seven eyewitnesses, while a third blast hit Jabe market in the Bwiza neighbourhood, according to another witness. Five people were killed and about 50 wounded, a health worker helping to care for the injured told Reuters yesterday. The witnesses and the health worker requested anonymity. A man in a bus hit by a grenade explosion said it killed at least three people including a woman. The blast injured his leg, he told Reuters while awaiting treatment. “I saw people running in all directions, some crawling to find cover,” said a witness to the second explosion at the bus parking lot. During a visit to the wounded in hospital, Prime Minister Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni, told reporters the attacks had killed four and promised government help for those wounded. On Sunday, a grenade attack in the administrative capital Gitega killed two, according to local media.