Aid Workers Strike To Protest Murders

Aid agencies in Burundi ordered workers to suspend relief operations today in a one-day protest over the murders of three Swiss Red Cross workers.

The three, who had just delivered clean water and medicine to a troubled region of northern Burundi, were ambushed Tuesday as they traveled home in a four-wheel-drive vehicle marked with the Red Cross emblem.

Burundi’s Tutsi-dominated military blamed Hutu rebels for the shootings. Both sides - engaged in bloody ethnic warfare in Burundi’s countryside - denied responsibility.

The attack has prompted soul-searching among aid workers, torn between their mission to provide humanitarian aid and the danger of working in the central African nation, deeply troubled by ethnic violence and poverty.

As a safety measure, all Red Cross workers in Burundi were called to return to the capital Bujumbura on Wednesday. U.N. agencies and some embassies have banned travel outside Bujumbura.