Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza has condemned the killing of a senior army officer who was shot along with his wife and bodyguard in an attack that also wounded their child in the central African nation’s expanding wave of deadly violence. Brigadier General Athanase Kararuza, who was a military adviser in the office of the vice president, was dropping his child at a school in a neighborhood of the capital Bujumbura on Monday when his car was attacked by rocket and gun fire, army spokesman Gaspard Baratuza told reporters, Reuters reported. Kararuza has previously worked as a deputy commander of an international peace force in the Central African Republic. “He energetically fought against the coup plotters last year and exceptionally contributed in strengthening peace and security during and after elections,” Nkurunziza said in a statement late on Monday. Tit-for-tat attacks between Nkurunziza’s security forces and his opponents have escalated since April 2015 when he announced a disputed bid for a third term as president and won reelection in July 2015. The UN says more than 400 people have been killed and over 250,000 have fled.
