Four killed, 20 wounded in Burundi grenade attack

BUJUMBURA, Aug 7 (Reuters) Four people were killed and 20 others seriously wounded in the third hand grenade attack in a week in bars in the Burundian capital, authorities said today.

A local official said two people died on the spot and two others died in the hospital after the attacks were carried out by unknown assailants yesterday night in the northern Bujumbura suburb of Ngagara.

''Those criminals threw five grenades and shot at customers who were drinking beer,'' local government official Aime Desire Ndibanje told Reuters.

Burundi's government estimates there are about 300,000 illegal guns in the hands of civilians and armed groups, left over from more than a decade of ethnic civil war.

No one had been arrested and police had no immediate suspects.

Many in Bujumbura suspect disaffected former combatants not yet integrated into Burundi's security services are behind the attacks.

''It is not easy to know who is responsible for these criminal acts, but again, this is the problem of too many arms being spread throughout the country,'' he said.

Two bars were attacked in a similar fashion on July 30 in an eastern suburb of Bujumbura, and four people were killed and 17 injured.

The tiny central African country of 7 million people has been torn by sporadic conflict between its majority Hutu and minority Tutsi ethnic groups since independence from Belgium in 1962.

REUTERS SP VV1506