Fighting in Burundi Leaves 110 Dead

Hundreds of militants believed to be from the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo descended on northern Burundi on Monday, according to local officials.

At least 110 people were left dead in Cibitoke province since the militants began battling with Burundian troops on Thursday, army spokesperson Gaspard Baratuza stated, according to German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA).

DPA has cited other anonymous sources as stating the militants crossed into Burundi from the DRC, and were heavily armed.

The DRC has been mired in an almost constant state of internal conflict since the 1990s, with fighting repeatedly spilling into neighboring countries.

In the last three months of 2014, Ugandan rebels in the DRC were accused of massacring over 200 civilians in the country's east.

The latest wave of violence in Burundi came after the DRC government vowed on Friday to restart military operations against the Rwandan Hutu militant group, the FDLR.

“The option of disarming (the FDLR) by force is now inevitable and all the preparations to do so have been made,” DRC public media reported a government spokesperson as stating.

The militant group largely operates out of areas near the DRC's border with Burundi, though the Congolese government had given the organization six months to disarm last year.

However, in December, a United Nations report warned peace negotiations between the government and rebels in the east had made little progress.

The DRC government itself has acknowledged that only 300 of the FDLR's roughly 15,000 fighters have disarmed.