Heavy fighting between rival Burundian troops erupted in the capital today, a 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.
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 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 Burunti National RadiO and Television (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.
Opposition and rights groups insist that it is unconstitutional for Nkurunziza, who has been in office since 2005, to run for more than two terms. The president, however, argues his first term did not count as he was elected by parliament, not directly by the people.
Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader from the Hutu majority and born-again Christian, also believes he ascended to the presidency with divine backing.
