Burundian students broke into the US embassy in Bujumbura to escape police, yesterday, as one of the country’s vice-presidents announced he had fled to Belgium, escalating a political crisis in the central African nation days before key elections.

Ignoring armed US Marines watching from the roof of the US Mission in the capital Bujumbura, around 200 students climbed under the gate and over the wall, then sat down inside the compound with their hands raised.

The students sought refuge after police threatened to break up their camp outside the embassy compound where they had been sheltering for weeks, an AFP photographer said.

The US embassy said around "approximately 100 students peacefully remain in the visitor parking lot,” and urged the government to find a "peaceful resolution.”

Bujumbura has been in turmoil since late April, when President Pierre Nkurunziza launched a controversial bid for a third consecutive term, triggering widespread protests and a failed coup attempt.

Two grenade blasts in Bujumbura, last week, wounded eight people, the latest in a string of such attacks since the unrest began.

Parliamentary elections are due to be held on Monday, ahead of the presidential vote on July 15.

Nkurunziza yesterday launched his presidential election campaign, watched by thousands of cheering loyalists, but his bid was dealt a fresh blow after one of his top deputies fled the country and urged him to quit power.

In a letter addressed to Nkurunziza, second vice-president Gervais Rufyikiri urged the president to "put the interests of Burundian people before personal interests.”

"Withdraw your presidential bid, because it violates the constitution,” the letter said.

Rufyikiri told France 24 television he had sought refuge in Belgium.

"I left because I was not able to continue to support the attitude of the president, his desire to lead the people of Burundi on the path of illegality,” he told the broadcaster late Wednesday from Belgium.

Nkurunziza’s re-election bid has been branded by opponents as unconstitutional and a violation of a peace deal that paved the way to end 13 years of civil war in 2006, raising fears that the current crisis could plunge the country back into widespread violence.

President talks ‘reconciliation’

The reaction from Nkurunziza’s camp was defiant -- wishing Rufyikiri "good riddance” and accusing him of links to coup plotters who tried but failed to oust the president in mid-May.

"Good riddance to him, all the more so because investigations have proved that Gervais Rufyikiri was mixed up in the failed coup attempt,” the president’s spokesperson, Willy Nyamitwe, told AFP.

"Someone of his rank, who was involved in an attempt to overthrow democratically-elected institutions... his departure is good riddance for us,” he added. "He can’t say he fled because he left officially, with the president’s authorisation and with expenses.”

Rufyikiri had already been sidelined in the government, having joined other members of the ruling CNDD-FDD party earlier this year who had spoken out against Nkurunziza’s attempt to stay in office for another five years.

In his letter, Rufyikiri said the president was pushing Burundi into a "real socio-economic crisis” and accused him of being "deaf”.

"You yourself had frequently said ‘In Burundi, there are the deaf’. History may well place you at the top of this category, given the way you have turned your back on all those who have sent you messages advising you to abandon an unconstitutional third mandate,” it said.

Several other top officials, including members of the electoral commission and constitutional court, have already fled the country, joining at least 100,000 ordinary people in a refugee exodus to neighbouring Tanzania, DR and Rwanda.

Last week, the Burundian human rights group, Aprodeh, said that at least 70 people had been killed, 500 wounded and more than 1,000 jailed since late April, when opposition supporters took to the streets to protest Nkurunziza’s re-election bid.

But speaking to supporters as he launched his campaign in Kirundo, one of Burundi’s rural provinces where he still draws widespread support, the president asserted the country was "doing very well despite all the rumours”.

A presidential aide also said Nkurunziza promised his supporters that he would oversee the final stages of Burundi’s "process of reconciliation”.