BURUNDI: Clashes Erupt In Burundi After Failed Coup Attempt

Heavy fighting between rival Burundian troops erupted in the capital on Thursday, the day after a top general launched a coup to oust the central African nation's President Pierre Nkurunziza.



Military sources and witnesses said troops loyal to the president, who was outside the country when the coup was launched and who has been blocked from returning, were fighting off an attack against the state television and radio complex.

Media workers also said supporters of the president carried out attacks against independent media broadcasters in the capital.

The influential African Public Radio (RPA) station, which was shut down during weeks of protests against the president and reopened after the coup attempt, was hit by a rocket and was ablaze, witnesses said.

Media boss and rights activist Innocent Muhozi, whose independent TV station was also attacked, said the raids were carried out by pro-Nkurunziza police and ruling party youth.

"During the night a truck full of police attacked RPA," Muhozi said, adding they fired a rocket at the radio building after fighting pro-coup troops guarding the station.

View galleryA man raises his arms as people celebrate in the streets …
A man raises his arms as people celebrate in the streets of Bujumbura on May 13, 2015 following the  …
AFP reporters said the crackle of automatic weapons fire and the thump of explosions could be heard throughout the night and intensifying before dawn.

The streets were largely deserted by civilians as sporadic clashes could be heard in other parts of the city, while plumes of smoke were seen on the city skyline.

According to a pro-coup military source, the state media complex was attacked in the early hours of the morning after Burundi's armed forces chief used national radio to declare that the coup, launched by former intelligence chief Godefroid Niyombare, had failed.

"The national defence force calls on the mutineers to give themselves up," armed forces chief General Prime Niyongabo, a supporter of the president, said in an address on state radio.

However a spokesman for the anti-Nkurunziza camp, Burundi's police commissioner Venon Ndabaneze, told AFP the claim was false and that General Niyombare's supporters were in control of many facilities including Bujumbura's international airport.
A journalist inside the RTNB building said the complex came under attack after the loyalist broadcast, and that heavy weapons including cannons and rockets were being used.

The attempted coup capped weeks of deadly civil unrest sparked by the president's controversial bid to stand for a third term.

The crisis has raised fears of a return to widespread violence in the impoverished country, which is still recovering from a 13-year civil war that ended in 2006 and which left hundreds of thousands dead.