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NAIROBI, Nov 16 (AFP) - Massacres during and after Burundi's abortive coup bid last month left several tens of thousands of people dead, a doctor with the Belgian branch of Medicins sans Frontieres (MSF), Roger Tech, said Tuesday.
Tech said it was impossible to know exactly how many people had been killed in ethnic massacres among the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsis, who dominate the army that slew Burundi's first Hutu president on October 21.
Meanwhile, the mortality rate in refugee camps in Rwanda for Burundis who fled to the neighbouring country from the slaughter was between two and three in 10,000 daily, Tech said.
"We're already in an emergency situation in the camps, since we set the critical mortality rate at two in 10,000," he added.
More than 400,000 Burundis have fled the small highland nation in central Africa to southern Rwanda and some 250,000 to Tanzania, according to MSF (Doctors without borders).
Within Burundi itself, some 130,000 people have been displaced in a total population of about six million, and about 4,000 wounded people have been registered, mainly in the hospitals. Tech said these figures were certainly under-estimates.
Some of the injuries treated by MSF doctors were recent ones, indicating that there was still trouble in Burundi, Tech said. The wounds were caused by bayonets, machetes, bullets and hand grenades.
Burundi's Rutana region in the southeast remains inaccessible by road, partly because barricades have been erected.
