Oh No! Assassins Kills Burundi President's Chief Security Officer (Photo)

Suspected assassins wearing military uniforms shot dead a former Burundian security chief who was a close ally of President Pierre Nkurunziza yesterday.

 
According to presidential spokesman, Willy Nyamitwe who confirmed the news, Gen. Adolphe Nshimirimana (pictured) was assassinated yesterday in a car alongside three of his bodyguards in the Kamenge district in Bujumbura.

General Adolphe Nshimirimana was in charge of the president’s personal security at the time of his death. When a president refuses to step down...he brings war to his people!

Presidential spokesperson Nyamitwe said;

"I have lost a brother, a companion in the struggle. The sad reality is that General Adolphe Nshimirimana is no longer with this world," he said in a message posted on Twitter.

Police and witnesses said the General's pick-up was hit by two rockets and sprayed with automatic gunfire along with his driver and two others. General Adolphe was a close aide to President Pierre and was seen as the mastermind behind the crackdown on the protests as well as a key player in foiling the coup attempt.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the assassination, although the coup plotters have since regrouped and have launched a rebellion in the north of the country, and have also been linked to a string of grenade attacks in Bujumbura. There are fears that renewed conflict in the country could reignite ethnic Hutu-Tutsi violence and bring another humanitarian disaster to central Africa's troubled Great Lakes region. The last civil war in Burundi, which ended in 2006, left at least 300,000 people dead.

AP/Daily Nation