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Catholic World News News Feature

Burundi Archbishop Reported Killed By Rebels September 10, 1996

BUJUMBURA, Burundi (CWN) - Burundi's army reported today that Hutu rebels had apparently killed Archbishop Joachim Ruhuna of Gitega, presumably because his ethnic background is Tutsi.

Army officials could not confirm his death, although they did know the archbishop had been dragged from his car on Friday by rebels. "They found his burned-out car this morning on the road ... but they haven't found his body yet," an army spokesman said. He also said a nun and the archbishop's driver who were travelling with him were also missing and presumed dead.

Priests of the archdiocese told Reuters News Service that the archbishop's car was found with some burned clothes inside about three miles north of Bugendana village in Gitega. The archbishop was booed at a funeral for Tutsi massacre victims in Bugendana on July 23, when he said there were extremists among both the Tutsi minority and the Hutu majority in the ethnically-split country.

President Pierre Buyoya's spokesman Jean-Luc Ndizeye said Archbishop Ruhuna had received many death threats from the rebel Forces for the Defense of Democracy after delivering the homily. More than 150,000 people have died in ethnic violence between the Tutsi minority and Hutu majority in Burundi over the last three years, fuelling fears of a repeat of neighboring Rwanda's 1994 genocide of nearly one million people.