burundi: dreams of peace

Burundi on Tuesday entered its 11th year of civil war that has claimed more than 300 000 mostly civilian lives and ravaged this tiny French-speaking central African country that nevertheless clings today to hopes for peace. The civil war was sparked 10 years ago by the assassination of Burundi's first Hutu president Melchior Ndadaye in an attempted military coup. A decade of inter-ethnic violence has followed.