Army officers were responsible for killing of Ndadye, Le Soir claims

High-ranking army officers were responsible for the 1993 murder of Burundi's first freely elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, the Belgian newspaper Le Soir said yesterday, citing a leaked United Nations report.

The report concluded that the massacre of Tutsi civilians which followed the Hutu President's death was not spontaneous but orchestrated. Only four months after Ndadaye's landslide victory, officers of the Tutsi-dominated army staged an unsuccessful coup in which the president and prominent Hutus were killed. This set the stage for the civil strife in which tens of thousands have died. Reuter - Brussels