THE UN/ BURUNDI: The UN Security Council called an emergency session on the situation in Burundi yesterday after the massacre of more than 150 Tutsi Congolese refugees at a camp in western Burundi.
Most of the victims were women, children and babies, shot dead and burned in their shelters at the Gatumba refugee transit camp some 16 km northwest of Bujumbura, near the central African nation's border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN peacekeeping mission in Burundi said on Saturday.
Those behind the massacre "will answer for their acts against humanity", a UN statement said, pledging to take "all necessary measures" to protect civilians.
The UN refugee agency said 136 people were killed in the camp, 20 others had died in hospital, and that it was considering moving the camp further inland from the border.
The Forces for National Liberation (FNL), a Hutu rebel group, took responsibility for the attack, saying they were aiming to hit a military camp nearby.
But Burundi's army said the purpose of the attack was killing refugees at their camp and it was not aimed at the military base.
Up to 20,000 Congolese Tutsi refugees have taken shelter in UN camps in Burundi after fleeing neighbouring Congo, terrified of being targeted by government troops, local militia and civilians in eastern Congo.
The nearly 3,500-strong FNL is the only rebel group refusing to join a power-sharing government to end a decade-long civil war that pits Burundi's politically dominant Tutsi minority against rebels from the Hutu majority. An estimated 300,000 people have been killed, mostly through hunger and disease, in the fighting to date.
The UN peacekeeping force, due to have 5,650 soldiers when it reaches full strength, was set up in May to ensure peace promises between rival factions are implemented.
The Dutch holders of the rotating EU presidency condemned the killings yesterday as "cowardly and despicable".
"It is with horror and great indignation that the European Union has learned of the attack," the Dutch said in a statement.
"The presidency of the European Union expects that every effort will be made to establish the identity of the perpetrators of this cowardly and despicable attack, to arrest them and bring them to trial."
The Dutch, who took over the rotating presidency of the 25-member bloc in July, urged the FNL to enter peace talks.