Grenade attack kills 19 at Burundi wedding

Sun Aug 24, 2008 1:15pm EDT
 
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(Updates death toll)

BUJUMBURA, Aug 24 (Reuters) - A man killed 19 people in Burundi when he hurled a grenade into his brother's wedding party in what police said on Sunday was a land dispute.

One person was arrested after the incident on Saturday night in the central Gitega province.

"The grenade was launched into a crowd of people at the wedding ceremony," said police spokesman Pierre Ntarabaganyi.

He said the suspect was a brother of the groom, but that the groom and his wife survived the attack. Dozens of guests were hurt.

Burundi is emerging from more than a decade of ethnic war that killed 300,000 people. A recent U.N. study said there are still hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons in the country. (Reporting by Patrick Nduwimana; Editing by Daniel Wallis)




 

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