A top Tutsi general was gunned down in Burundi today, the latest bloodshed in a year of violent political turmoil that has now prompted a preliminary probe by international prosecutors into a litany of atrocities.
A wave of unrest, targeted assassinations and alleged torture has left some 500 people dead and forced more than 270,000 from their homes since April last year, with some analysts warning the central African nation may now be on the brink of a new civil war.
General Athanase Kararuza, a security advisor to one of Burundi's vice presidents, was shot dead in the capital Bujumbura as he was dropping his daughter off at school.
Kararuza, also a former commander of the African Union-led peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic, his wife and daughter were killed in the attack by unidentified heavily-armed men.
"Those who killed my colleague General Kararuza and (perpetrated) other similar attacks are trying to sow divisions in the army and the police," presidential spokesman Willy Nyamitwe wrote on Twitter.
Yesterday, a police colonel, also a Tutsi, was seriously wounded in an attack, while Human Rights Minister Martin Nivyabandi and his wife had a miraculous escape from a grenade attack as they left church.
The latest spasm of violence in a country with a troubled ethnic history was triggered when President Pierre Nkurunziza decided on April 25 last year to run again for office.
His move sparked weeks of street protests and a failed coup, but he went on to win an election in July that was slammed as anti-constitutional by civil society and the opposition.
Shortly after today's killing, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court announced that after several pleas for calm, she was launching a preliminary probe into the crisis.
Fatou Bensouda said she had "repeatedly called upon all involved to refrain from violence" and had warned "that those alleged to be committing crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court could be held individually accountable".
Her office had reviewed reports "detailing acts of killing, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as cases of enforced disappearances".
"All these acts appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC," she said, referring to the tribunal based in The Hague and set up in 2002 to try the world's worst crimes.
