Burundi demonstrator shot dead as protest erupts in south

A demonstrator was shot dead and two others wounded in southern Burundi on Monday, a local official and witness said, in one of the first confirmed reports of civil unrest erupting outside the capital Bujumbura.

The protester was killed when local police opened fire on a group of around a hundred demonstrators in Muyange in Bururi province, around 60 kilometres (38 miles) southeast of the capital, the sources said.

Civil unrest was also reported in Matana, further south in the same province.

Protests against President Pierre Nkurunziza's controversial bid to stand for a third consecutive term have been taking place in the small central African nation since late April, but the violence -- which has left at least 30 dead -- has largely been confined to the capital.
Nkurunziza has also insisted that the unrest has only affected four districts of the city, and that there is "peace and security in 99.9 percent of the country." Some small, minor protests had been reported in rural areas of the nation in recent weeks, but far smaller and more sporadic in nature than in the capital.

Bujumbura was meanwhile hit by renewed clashes, with police also out in force after a weekend marked by more deadly violence.

In Cibitoke, a district of the capital that has been at the heart of the protest movement, several hundred youths were able to throw up barricades and were singing and chanting slogans. Police moved in to break up the protests, with five stone-throwing demonstrators hurt by police fire.

Elsewhere in the city, demonstrators also clashed with members of the Imbonerakure, the ruling CNDD-FDD party's youth wing that has been classed as a militia and accused of intimidating opponents.

- Anger over weekend assassination -
Activists and opposition leaders had called for street protests to be stepped up after three people died and 40 others were wounded in a grenade attack on Friday evening, and after the leader of a small opposition party, Zedi Feruzi, was gunned down along with a bodyguard in the capital on Saturday.

"We started blocking the road at 4 am because of the assassination," said Cadet, a 32-year-old teacher and protester in Cibitoke.

The influential Catholic Church, which is also opposed to Nkurunziza, has meanwhile called for a 24 hour break in protests until Tuesday.

Burundi's crisis, which began in late April after the ruling party nominated Nkurunziza to stand again in the June 26 presidential election, deepened earlier this month when a top general staged a failed coup attempt.

Parliamentary polls, initially set to take place on Tuesday, have been postponed to June 5.

Opposition and rights groups say that Nkurunziza's bid for a third five-year term violates the constitution as well as the terms of a peace deal that ended a 13-year civil war in 2006.
That conflict, marked by brutal ethnic violence between the country's ethnic Hutu and Tutsi communities, left hundreds of thousands dead, and there are fears the latest unrest could plunge the small, landlocked and impoverished nation back into widespread violence.

Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader and born-again Christian, argues that his first term did not count as he was elected by parliament, not directly by the people.

He has so far resisted the protests and international pressure and intends to maintain his bid for a third term, for which he also has strong support in rural areas and among sections of the Hutu majority.

Refugees continue to flee the violence, however, most to neighbouring Tanzania, where over 50,000 people are struggling to survive in dire conditions on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.

Cholera has broken out in squalid camps, where at least 31 people have died among a total of over 3,000 cases of the disease, whose numbers are increasing by up to 400 cases a day, according to the UN refugee agency.