Explosions at a military ammunition store in Burundi’s commercial capital on Tuesday night killed four people, with the blasts lasting \u200bseveral hours, according to comments from residents this Wednesday.<\/p>\n
An army Spokesperson \u200csaid late on Tuesday that the explosions, which reverberated across the city, sending plumes of smoke into the sky and prompting terrified residents to seek shelter, were caused by \u200ban electrical short circuit.<\/p>\n
In Bujumbura’s Musaga neighbourhood, residents said the blasts \u200bhad killed two people, one of them a young woman.
\n“She was \u2060in front of me. I saw her falling as she was running \u200bin a group of people. After a short while I came to know \u200bshe was violently hit by a bomb,” said one resident who asked not to be named.<\/p>\n
Another man was killed 100 metres away at a church in Gasekebuye neighbourhood.<\/p>\n
“He was \u200bin a prayer meeting, just went out of the meeting room and \u200bthen got hit,” said another resident who did not wish to be named.<\/p>\n
Another resident of \u200cGasekebuye \u2060said he had taken his employee’s body to the mortuary and saw the body of another victim of the explosion brought in.
\nA Bujumbura resident who did not wish to be named and lives 1 km away from \u200bthe ammunition store said \u200bthe explosions lasted \u2060several hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was about six hours of projectiles flying overhead and landing randomly. During the initial few hours, there \u200bwas a constant barrage but then it slowed down \u200bat around \u206021:00 or 22:00 (CAT) The last one I heard was (at) 12:30 (CAT),” the resident told Reuters. “We just had to shelter where we were.”<\/p>\n
Authorities have not given an official \u2060death \u200btoll.
\nPresident Evariste Ndayishimiye sent a message of condolence \u200bon his X account to those affected by the incident but gave no other details.<\/p>\n
\u2014Reuters\u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14609,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-30550","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Another man was killed 100 metres away at a church in Gasekebuye neighbourhood.","published_date":"","news_description":"Another man was killed 100 metres away at a church in Gasekebuye neighbourhood.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30551,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30550\/revisions\/30551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=30550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}