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Burundi remembers late leader Melchior Ndadaye

Xinhua, October 22, 2015 Adjust font size:

Burundian citizens Wednesday commemorated the 22nd anniversary of the assassination of President Melchior Ndadaye, the first Hutu president democratically elected who was killed three months after the start of his rule.

Ceremonies marking the commemoration happened countrywide and in the east African country's capital Bujumbura, Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza, other senior officials and diplomats accredited to Burundi participated in the event.

Ndadaye's commemoration anniversary took place in two separate events including church services in his memory and laying flowers on his tomb or on his memorials throughout the east African nation.

In a church service at Regina Mundi Cathedral in the capital Bujumbura, Monsignor Evariste Ngoyagoye regretted the killing of the late President Ndadaye a couple of months after he was democratically elected as Burundi's president.

After the church service at Regina Mundi Cathedral, the president and his spouse, other top officials and diplomats went to the Palace of Democracy Martyrs where the late President Ndadaye and his close collaborators were buried.

They laid wreaths of flowers on the tomb of the late President Ndadaye as well his close collaborators killed along him and who were buried at the Palace of Democracy Martyrs.

The late President Melchior Ndadaye was killed on Oct. 21, 1993 just 102 days after he was sworn in as Burundi's president.

He was born in 1953 in Nyabihanga, in the central province of Mwaro.

In the same connection, families of at least 80 pupils killed burned alive at Kwibubu in Kibimba in the central province of Gitega also laid flowers at Kwibubu memorial.

The victims' parents regretted that the responsibility in the killing of their children has not yet been made.

Ndadaye's assassination sparked interethnic violence with at least 300,000 victims, according to the United Nations. Endit