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NAIROBI, Oct 22 (AFP) - Rebel troops who staged a coup in Burundi have established a committee of national salvation and closed the country's frontiers, Radio Burundi reported Friday.
The report, monitored by a radio station in neighbouring Rwanda, said the committee would be led by a former interior minister Francois Ngeze.
Coup leader have imposed a curfew and have closed the country's borders, the report said.
No information was given on President Melchior Ndadaye, who was reported by Rwandan radio as having been executed along with several supporters during the coup Thursday.
Ngeze was a minister in the government of Pierre Buyoya, a member of the minority ethnic Tutsi who lost an election on June 1 to Ndadaye, the first president of Burundi from the ethnic Hutu majority.
In their statement on Radio Burundi, whose broadcasts have been interrupted since the coup, the rebels called on local, political and religious leaders to attend a meeting Friday.
They called on the public to remain calm and for neighbouring countries to refrain from interfering in Burundi's affairs.
After the early morning coup Thursday the rebels from the minority Tutsi ethnic group took Ndadaye and several ministers to an army base in the capital Bujumbura, reports said.
Later Thursday, Rwandan radio said Ndadaye had been executed, along with Interior Minister Juvenal Ndayikeza and top security official Richard Mdikumami, according to Burundi's ambassador to Kenya, Joseph Bangurambona,
The report could not be independently confirmed as contact with Bujumbura was impossible, Bangurambona said.
at/rt/ml AFP AFP
