Event summary
- On Sunday 2nd August 2015, gunmen wearing military uniforms shot dead a former Burundian security chief and close ally of President Pierre Nkurunziza.
- OSINT summaries indicated Sunday that General Adolphe Nshimirimana was killed in a car alongside three of his bodyguards in the Kamenge district of the capital Bujumbura.
- Four attackers in military fatigues sprayed the car with bullets and drove off shortly after 8 a.m.
- Two of the attackers had machine guns and two others rocket launchers.
- General Adolphe Nshimirimana was in charge of the president’s personal security at the time of his death.
Analysis
Killing of General Adolphe Nshimirimana heightens tensions in Burundi after a disputed presidential poll. Friday 24th July, 2015 Burundi announced presidential poll results in which the incumbent President Pierre Nkurunziza won the election with almost 70 percent of the vote. The county’s opposition, which had been against Nkurunziza’s third term bid, shunned the elections.
The civil strife in Burundi accrued to President Pierre Nkurunziza’s announcing his third term in presidency mid-April, 2015. The strife now happens to be edged towards an ugly twist.
Some of the army generals behind the attempted coup have vowed to lead a rebellion to oust Nkurunziza, who won the July 21 presidential poll after the opposition boycotted the elections.
The armed attackers were in possession of rocket launchers. This indicates possession of dangerous weapons by the country’s rebellious factions. Rocket launchers include shoulder-fired missile weapons. They fire a rocket-propelled projectile at a target yet are small enough to be carried by a single person and fired while held on one’s shoulder.
Forecast
Intelligence sources fear the violence could split the Burundi down ethnic lines and lead to another civil war, an alarming prospect for a region still scared by the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda where 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus were slaughtered.
The last 12-year civil war roughed up the military, which at the time was led by the ethnic Tutsi minority, against rebel factions of the majority Hutus, the biggest of which was led by Pierre Nkurunziza.
