The president of Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza, says he is back in the country, only a day after an attempted coup led to heavy clashes in the capital Bujumbura.
The country's military declared a coup against the president, a former Hutu rebel leader, following weeks of clashes between police and demonstrators protesting his decision to run for a 3rd presidential term.
Coup leader Major General Godefroid Niyombare, also a Hutu, in a press statement on Wednesday said,
“President Pierre Nkurunziza is removed from office, the government is dissolved. All people are asked to respect the lives and property of others.”
There were no new statements from Gen Niyombare on Thursday but a spokesman for the coup forces, Gen Cyrille Ndayirukiye, told Agence France-Presse the uprising had failed.
"We faced an overpowering military determination to support the system in power," he said.
Burundi's ethnic make-up of its 10 million strong population, 85% Hutu and 15% Tutsi, is an exact mirror of the ethnic make-up in neighbouring Rwanda, with widespread international concern that the current political violence may escalate into clashes between the two ethnic groups, with wounds still fresh from a previous war, which left over 300,000 dead, ending only a decade ago.