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Refugees reported that the army had begun killing Hutus in several districts of Burundi and reports reaching the capital also spoke of Hutus rising up to massacre their historical overlords in a latest bout of the ethnic bloodletting Ndadaye had pledged to end.
Ndadaye was elected in June in the country's first multi-party polls, defeating outgoing military ruler Pierre Buyoya.
Assessing casualties in the latest violence was not possible, but previous strife between the two communities since independence from Belgium in 1962 has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
Staff of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said that almost 250,000 people had fled into neighbouring Rwanda to escape ethnic bloodshed which followed the coup. Another 12,000 refuees were reported in Tanzania.
Soldiers on Monday discreetly buried Ndadaye and senior aides slain with him in last Thursday's putsch, sources close to the army said, but there was no official confirmation of the report.
Representatives of Ndadaye's Burundi Democracy Front (FRODEBU) and three other political parties called for a civil service strike on Sunday after a protest march against the coup gathered about 1,000 people here.
Health Minister Jean Minami, who was in the Rwandan capital Kigali during the coup and announced plans for a government in exile, on Sunday said the alleged plotters would be arrested and brought to trial.
According to three surviving ministers, the national assembly's speaker and his deputy, the minister of territorial administration and the head of the intelligence service were all killed along with Ndadaye.
Communications Minister Jean-Marie Ngendahayo, one of those in refuge here, said the wife of the foreign minister was also shot dead as she cradled a four-month-old baby in her arms.
sa-dn/nb AFP AFP
