BUJUMBURA (Reuters) - A British
aid worker killed by ethnic Hutu rebels in Burundi earlier this week was
murdered in cold blood, a survivor of the attack said.
Charlotte Wilson, 27, who was working
with Britain's Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), was among 21 people killed
after rebels opened fire on a tourist bus and two other vehicles on Burundi's
main road near the capital Bujumbura on Thursday.
Witnesses said almost all the victims had survived the initial ambush but were then executed one by one, including Wilson, who worked as a VSO teacher in neighbouring Rwanda.
A survivor of the attack, who was spared along with her child by a rebel leader, said Wilson was still alive when the bus crashed on the side of the road after coming under fire.
"When we were all told to leave the bus, she had difficulties getting up. First I thought she was wounded like many others, but then I understood she was just very afraid," the woman said late on Friday.
"When the rebels' chief told me I could leave, I was going slowly down the road and heard them asking the white lady for money. She replied that she had already given all she had. I later heard gunshots but I didn't see how she died."
Official sources in Bujumbura said Wilson had been killed by a bullet to the chest.
Her body was at a hospital in Bujumbura on Saturday, waiting to be flown home.
The bus was travelling from the Rwandan capital Kigali to Bujumbura when it was ambushed. The bodies of the Rwandan victims were returned home on Saturday.
More than 200,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in a seven-year civil war between Hutu rebels and the predominantly Tutsi government and army.
Rebels crossed into neighbouring Uganda last year and kidnapped 14 foreign tourists who were on holiday tracking rare mountain gorillas. They later murdered eight of them.