Rival factions fight for control of Burundi

Rival factions of the army fought for control of Burundi on Thursday morning after forces loyal to President Pierre Nkurunziza sought to put down an attempted coup.

Mr Nkurunziza was unable to re-enter the east African country after General Godefroid Niyombare, a popular, senior figure in the ruling elite, declared he had overthrown the president while he was out of the country at a regional crisis meeting in Tanzania.

But although the news was greeted with jubilation from civilians who thronged the city, forces under General Prime Niyongabo, the head of the army, have since fought back offering heavy resistance.

"There was really heavy gunfire - it started at 4am when the loyalists who had already surrounded the radio television station made an assault," a security source based in the capital Bujumbura who did not want to be named told the Financial Times.

Mr Nkurunziza called for calm later on Thursday morning once gunfire had stopped, saying the situation was under control. Although Mr Nkurunziza was unable to return to Burundi on Wednesday evening, eyewitnesses said pro-government forces had reclaimed control of the airport, which was reportedly operational on Thursday.

Tiny, landlocked Burundi, which is still recovering from a 12-year civil war that ended in 2005, has been plunged into crisis since Mr Nkurunziza announced he would stand for a third term contravening the terms of a peace deal and angering the opposition and some members of his own ruling party. Neighbouring countries fear that ethnic tensions could spill over into the rest of the region, where millions have died in wars and genocide since the 1990s. More than 70,000 Burundians have fled the country in past weeks, mostly to Rwanda and Tanzania.

Both the African Union and East African Community, the regional bloc of which Burundi is a member, have condemned the coup. They have also urged the president to step down and for the government to delay elections due to start later this month. Burundi has a long history of bloodless coups, some of them even staged by incumbent rulers to drum up support. This time, however members of the coup committee have been unable to convince senior security colleagues to join them, raising the possibility of a bloody battle.

"The coup people didn't really want to fight with the army, they [ the coup leaders] kept on trying to negotiate yesterday but they didn't come up with an agreement," said a person in Bujumbura who is in touch with the coup leaders.

While Bujumbura has been deluged by thousands of demonstrators protesting against Mr Nkurunziza's plans to extend his rule in past weeks, there were no protests on Thursday.

African heads of state who met in Tanzania to discuss the crisis yesterday said they would reconvene in two weeks.

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