Nine left dead after bloody Burundi bar massacre

The latest violence came in an attack on a Bujumbura bar on Saturday that witnesses said killed nine people, officials said.

Despite the efforts made by the United Nations and the Peace and Security Council of the African Union to monitor the situation, report on it and assist national authorities in improving the human rights situation, the situation continues to deteriorate further, and Burundi may be on the verge of widespread violence.

Meanwhile, hundreds of police and soldiers ringed the opposition flashpoint Mutakura district of Bujumbura early on Sunday to start a widely feared crackdown on "enemies of the nation".

On Saturday, Burundi said it wanted only to crush "terrorism", as it dismissed worldwide fears of fresh bloodletting if the government carries out threats to stamp out resistance to the president.

Five people were shot dead by police in the Musaga and Ngagara neighbourhoods of Bujumbura, said Pacifique Nininahazwe, leader of the Forum for Awareness and Development.

Tensions have been rising since April, when President Pierre Nkurunziza elected to run for a third term, even though the Constitution set a limit at two terms. "The current political crisis and violence does not stem from an "ethnic" confrontation", Christoph Vogel, a researcher focusing on Africa's Great Lakes region at the University of Zurich, said in a Twitter message.

In July, Mr Nkurunziza was re-elected to a third term with 70% of the vote.

At least 240 people have been killed since then, "with bodies dumped on the streets on an nearly nightly basis", UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein told the council on Monday.

"The language is unambiguous to Burundians and chillingly similar to that used in Rwanda in the 1990s before the genocide", the global Crisis Group (ICG) think tank said.

Kagame also sharply criticised his counterpart Nkurunziza, an evangelical pastor who believe he rules by "divine" will, but who he said is now rarely seen and "hides" while Burundi is in crisis.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday appointed Jamal Benomar, the UN's previous Yemen envoy, as a special adviser on Burundi and other matters.

But Nyamitwe said that the worldwide community had "fallen into the trap" of those who have wrongly warned of genocide, saying government speeches had "several meanings". "With many media outlets closed down since spring and opposition leaders overseas afraid to return home, the Government has not established the conditions for credible and inclusive political dialogue".

Burundi ended a 12-year civil war in 2005, when Hutu rebels fought the army led by Tutsis, the same ethnic divide that led to Rwanda's 1994 genocide in which 800,000 people were massacred. He says 200,000 have gone to Tanzania, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is important in that regard to remind Burundi, as a State party to the worldwide Criminal Court, that those engaging in atrocity crimes would face prosecution.