The slaughter of 160 Tutsi refugees was not part of Burundi's internal war but of a wider conflict spilling over from the Democratic Republic of Congo, South African Deputy President Mr Jacob Zuma said today.
The United Nations has deployed extra forces to avoid further bloodshed after the attack, in which Congolese Tutsi refugees were hacked, burned and shot to death at their camp just inside Burundi's border with Congo last Friday.
Burundi's president said on Thursday he would refuse talks with the Forces for National Liberation (FNL) rebels who claimed responsibility for the attack and remain a key obstacle to resolving his country's 10-year civil war.
But Mr Zuma, chief facilitator for the Burundi peace process, said the attack was bigger than Burundi's internal political problems. He said refugees were attacked by a group from Congo working with the FNL.
"In other words it's not like a conflict in Burundi, it is a spillover of the problems of the eastern Congo," Mr Zuma told South Africa's parliament.
Congolese refugees were targeted while other refugee camps less than 100 yards away were left alone, Mr Zuma said.
Burundi is struggling to emerge from a decade of ethnic war between its politically dominant Tutsi minority and rebels from the Hutu majority. The conflict has killed some 300,000 people and paralysed the economy of the tiny central African state.
Ethnic conflict in Rwanda and Burundi has long spilled over the border into eastern Congo where violence is fuelled by broadly similar ethnic and political ties.
Many of the victims of last week's attack were Congolese Tutsis, or Banyamulenge, who fled across the border into Burundi earlier this year from persecution they said followed an uprising by rebels linked to Rwanda who briefly captured the town of Congo town of Bukavu.