Cibitoke : sound of boots around Kibira

Residents near the Kibira natural reserve in Bukinanyana district of Cibitoke province (northwest Burundi) say they are worried because of movements of Rwandan armed men who are often seen in this forest. People are starting to flee these localities. The administration and the army are reassuring.

INFO SOS Médias Burundi

According to information on the ground, panic is perceptible among inhabitants of the Nderama, Bumba, Ryazo, Ruhembe, Giserama, Mvyave and Nyaruguru villages of the Bukinanyana district, in the Cibitoke province.

According to a security source, “movements of a heavily armed group speaking Kinyarwanda are reported on the edge of this immense natural forest. This armed group known as opposed to Kigali regularly extorts money from the inhabitants near the Kibira”.

According to various concordant sources, thefts are often committed in households by this group.

“Food, cows, goats, sheep and chickens are taken by force from the inhabitants”, warns a resident who says she has been repeatedly the victim of crimes by these armed men.

According to her, this young mother of five children is about to flee her locality to other districts so as not to risk her life and that of her family.

Abundant in the same sense, a sixty-year-old person mentions many crimes attributable to this armed group, including even cases of murder.

Already denounced several times by inhabitants of Mabayi, these men are now trying to settle in the neighboring district of Bukinanyana.

Interviewed inhabitants ask administration and military authorities to take action to put this armed group out of harm’s way, which disturbs the peace of peaceful citizens.

The presence of this armed group speaking Kinyarwanda is mentioned in security reports of the grassroots administration and the population, as confirmed by the administrator of Bukinanyana.

Christian Nkurikiye nevertheless reassures the population and asks them to lend a hand to security forces established in Kibira.

Contacted on this subject, the commander of military operations in the Mabayi and Bukinanyana districts, on the Kibira side, said that “this natural forest is under the control of his men”.

He therefore denies the presence of any Rwandan armed group.

However, a military source on condition of anonymity confirms the presence of a Kinyarwanda-speaking armed group established in Kibira for more than a decade.

The same source adds that similar shuttles between Burundi and the DR Congo have been reported.

These armed men cross the Kibira very close to the border with Rwanda via the Rusizi River in the Rugombo and Buganda districts where they have numerous military posts, coming from the DRC.

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Residents who came to attend a meeting of Prime Minister Gervais Ndirakobuca in Mabayi, on August 22, 2023, on attacks by armed men speaking Kinyarwanda based in Kibira