NAIROBI, Kenya — Burundi's president on Friday accused Rwanda of funding and training rebels behind an attack last week on the village of Gatumba, close to Burundi's border with Congo, that killed at least 20 people.
A Burundian armed rebel group known as RED-Tabara and based in South Kivu, eastern Congo, took responsibility for the attack in a post on X, formerly Twitter. The group, which denied having targeted civilians, claimed to have killed nine soldiers and a police officer.
Burundian authorities consider RED-Tabara a terrorist movement. The group first appeared in 2011 and has been accused of a string of attacks in Burundi since 2015.
In a national radio broadcast, President Evariste Ndayishimiye claimed the RED-Tabara "are fed, sheltered, hosted and maintained in terms of logistics and financial means by … Rwanda."
Ndayishimiye said Burundi has been unsuccessfully negotiating with Rwanda for two years, seeking the extradition of the rebels.
"As long as they have a country that provides them with uniforms, feeds them, protects them, shelters them, maintains them, we will have problems," he said.
There was no immediate reaction from Rwanda's government to Ndayishimiye's accusations but it has previously said that it cannot extradite people who are under the protection of the U.N. refugee agency.
Relations between the two central African neighbors improved with the ascension to power of Ndayishimiye in June 2020 and borders between them reopened.
