30,000 Flee Burundi After Coup by Army

KIGALI, Rwanda — An estimated 30,000 refugees fearing new ethnic violence have fled Burundi since the army overthrew the government and cut communications with the outside world, the Red Cross said Friday. Several sources said the country’s ousted president had been assassinated.

Philippe Gaillard, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Rwanda, said 30,000 Hutus, the majority ethnic group in Burundi, had crossed Burundi’s northern border into Rwanda.

A member of Burundi’s Parliament said Hutus were arming themselves with machetes and spears after Thursday’s overthrow of Melchior Ndadaye, the nation’s first Hutu president.

Coup leaders, meanwhile, established a Committee of National Salvation to run the country temporarily, sealed the borders, closed the airport, shut down the port on Lake Tanganyika and cut phone lines under a state of emergency.

“The Burundi capital (Bujumbura) is virtually isolated from the rest of the world,” the state radio in Rwanda reported Friday.

The coup against the Hutu president and his government was led by Tutsis, a minority tribe that has dominated Burundi’s government, army and economy since the country won its independence from Belgium in 1962.

In an interview with Radio Rwanda on Friday, Burundi’s minister of health, Jean Minani, said the military had killed Ndadaye along with the head of the national legislative council “and many other leaders.”

Minani was visiting Rwanda at the time of the coup, however, and it was not clear where he got his information.

His account could not be independently confirmed because of the lack of communications with Burundi. From Switzerland came another unconfirmed report of Ndadaye’s death.

Perpetie Nshimirimana, Burundi’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said it was almost certain that the president had been assassinated, and that four leading ministers and the national security chief were reported killed.

Lawmaker Fabien Habimana, one of thousands to cross by foot into Rwanda during the day, said the temporary government is headed by a former interior minister, Francois Ngeze.

He described Ngeze as a “Hutu informer for the Tutsis” and “a puppet of Tutsi extremists.”

Ndadaye, 40, a former banker, was elected in June in Burundi’s first free, multi-party election, becoming the first Hutu and non-military man to assume the presidency since independence.

Hutus represent about 85% of Burundi’s 5.4 million people, but have been dominated by the taller, more privileged Tutsis for centuries. The Tutsis continued that domination after Belgium pulled out three decades ago.

Since then, the two groups have periodically slaughtered each other in tribal clashes that have no parallel on a continent where ethnic violence is common.