NAIROBI: A gunman killed Burundi’s environment and water minister early on Sunday, police said, the first senior government figure to be murdered in nearly two years of political violence.
Emmanuel Niyonkuru, 54, was attacked as he traveled home in the capital Bujumbura, police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye said in a tweet.
Violent protests erupted early in 2015 after President Pierre Nkurunziza said he would seek a third term — a move opponents said violated the constitution and a peace deal that ended an ethnically charged civil war.
At least 450 people have died in clashes between protesters and security forces, tit-for-tat killings and a failed coup, stoking fears of wider unrest in a region still haunted by the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda.
“The minister of water and environment was shot ... as he was getting home,” Nkurikiye said.
Four people had been arrested for questioning, including the owner of a bar that Niyonkuru visited regularly and two security personnel who were guarding his home. The fourth is a woman who was with the minister when he was killed.
President Nkurunziza said on Twitter the minister had been assassinated and offered condolences “to the family and all Burundians.”
Nkurunziza won re-election in July 2015 in a poll largely boycotted by the opposition.
Elsewhere in Burundi, police said seven people were injured when an unknown attacker threw a grenade in a church where people were praying.
That attack occurred on Saturday night in Rugazi district, 40 km (25 miles) north of Bujumbura.
Nkurikiye told Reuters the church where the attack took place was not registered with the government and had been erected illegally. Its leader had been detained for investigation, he said.
Burundi minister shot dead in capital
Burundi minister shot dead in capital
UK interior minister insists asylum reforms ‘fair’ amid blowback
- Mahmood argued in a speech that she was “restoring order and control” to Britain’s borders
- Amnesty International called the latest measure a “punitive blow”
LONDON: Britain’s interior minister doubled down Thursday on her tough stance on immigration despite criticism from charities and unease within the ruling Labour party that it is shedding left-wing voters.
Shabana Mahmood announced that asylum seekers who break the law or work illegally will be thrown out of government-funded accommodation and lose their support payments.
The policy forms part of a major overhaul of migration rules announced late last year and modelled on Denmark’s strict asylum system that aims to slash irregular migration to the UK.
Mahmood argued in a speech that she was “restoring order and control” to Britain’s borders and that her overhaul of the asylum was “firm but fair,” adding she would open new and safe legal routes.
But Amnesty International called the latest measure a “punitive blow” that “risks forcing people into destitution, homelessness and exploitation while they wait for their claims to be decided.”
Mahmood’s reforms are widely seen as an attempt to stem support for the hard-right Reform UK party, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage.
It has topped opinion polls for a year, in part because of the government’s failure to stop thousands of migrants from arriving in England from northern France on small boats.
But her stance has also been credited with contributing to Labour losing support to the progressive Green party, which won a local election in a traditional Labour heartland last week.
Mahmood said there was a middle path between Farage’s “nightmare pulling up the drawbridge and shutting out the world” and Green Party leader Zack Polanski’s “fairy tale of open borders.”
Her reform that makes refugee status temporary, including for accompanied children, came into force this week.
The status will be reviewed every 30 months, with refugees forced to return to their home countries once those are deemed safe.
They will also need to wait for 20 years, instead of the current five, before they can apply for permanent residency.
She also announced earlier this week that the government would stop issuing education visas to nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan.
It said there had been a surge in asylum applications by students from those countries and almost 135,000 asylum seekers in total had entered the UK using legal routes since 2021.
