Burundi\u2019s Human Rights Minister Martin Nivyabandi and his wife were lightly injured Sunday in a grenade attack as they were leaving a church in the capital Bujumbura, the city\u2019s mayor told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cA grenade was thrown in the car park of the Healing of the Souls church in Nyakabiga,\u201d mayor Freddy Mbonimpa said, referring to a neighbourhood in the city-centre.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were very lightly injured by the explosion and their vehicle was badly damaged. They only had a few scratches and were discharged after treatment in a hospital,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The mayor said \u201carmed criminals\u201d were behind the attack, a term used by Burundian officials to refer to members of rebel groups opposed to President Pierre Nkurunziza.<\/p>\n
Burundi has been in turmoil since Nkurunziza decided to run for a third term, which he went on to win in July 2015, with violence leaving more than 500 people dead. More than 270,000 people have fled the country.<\/p>\n
Numerous politicians, civil society leaders and army officers have been killed or narrowly escaped attacks since the start of the crisis.<\/p>\n
Such attacks are never claimed, with both sides systematically denying any responsibility.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Burundi\u2019s Human Rights Minister Martin Nivyabandi and his wife were lightly injured Sunday in a grenade attack as they were leaving a church in the capital Bujumbura, the city\u2019s mayor told AFP. \u201cA grenade was thrown in the car park of the Healing of the Souls church in Nyakabiga,\u201d mayor Freddy Mbonimpa said, referring to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":209278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=209277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/209278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=209277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=209277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=209277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}