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�We are concerned about the fate of some 30,000 people that for weeks, if not months, have abandoned their homes south of the capital Bujumbura following the fighting and tension, living as best they can�. This was the statement made by a government source contacted by MISNA in the Burundian capital, underlining that, despite the ongoing political progress, there are still preoccupying pockets of insecurity in the nation. A large part of the displaced have taken shelter in Kabezi, a commune along the banks of Lake Tanganyika, south of Bujumbura. Nearly all of them come from small hill villages, abandoned following the recent clashes. �Their conditions are precarious, the rain season brings cold weather and diseases spread more rapidly�, added the MISNA source. The Governor of the Rural Bujumbura province explained in an interview with the AFP that �the displaced cannot return to their homes in the hill
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because the fighting continues�. The Burundian armed forces today referred to have clashed in the same zone with suspected rebels of the FNL (National Liberation Forces), the last armed group still active in Burundi. Based on the reconstruction of a military spokesman, during the night between Monday and Tuesday a small group of men of the FNL attacked a military post in Masama, 15km south of Bujumbura, provoking the reaction of the soldier, which this morning found the lifeless bodies of 6 of the assailants. Last week the armed forces announced the death of a dozen elements of the FNL. Burundi is struggling to lift from 11-years of civil war, which claimed over 300,000 victims, for the most part civilians. In the next months, the transitional structures should hand-over power to the new institutions chosen by the Burundians in the first democratic elections since the start of the war.
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