Kagame warns of Burundi genocide

At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, France said it would present a draft resolution outlining steps to end the crisis including sanctions against those who are fomenting violence, diplomats said.

"The escalating violence in Burundi has reached a very worrying stage, maybe a tipping point", said Alexis Lamek, France's deputy ambassador the UN.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called for an immediate end to violence in Burundi urging the country's security forces "to exercise maximum restraint".

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, a neighbouring state that was torn apart by genocide in 1994 and shares the same ethnic mix as Burundi, has added his voice to growing worldwide concerns about violence in Burundi.

Burundi's government said on Monday efforts to collect illegal arms were proceeding peacefully, dismissing remarks by Rwanda's president that the nation could be sliding back into ethnic conflict.

The attacked bar is located near a police barrack, but the shooting spree was only discovered on Sunday morning.

At least 200 people have died in the latest turmoil and 200,000 have fled the country, stoking fears violence gripping the the central African country could spin into mass bloodletting and even genocide.

Nkurunziza, a Hutu rebel leader in Burundi's 12-year civil war between the Hutu and the Tutsi groups, came to power in 2005 in part of a peace deal.

"Today, the police shoot in the legs ... but when the day comes that we them to go to "work", do not come crying to us", he said.

A policeman is reported to have been injured and at least two people killed as government forces search house to house for weapons in opposition neighbourhoods.

Kagame also sharply criticised his counterpart Nkurunziza, an evangelical pastor who believe he rules by "divine" will, but who he said is now rarely seen and "hides" while Burundi is in crisis.

In Cibitoke and Mutakura, neighborhoods in northern Bujumbura that have been hotbeds of anti-government protests, a few residents told The Associated Press Saturday they had no option but to seek refuge elsewhere.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein and UN Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng, both warned the council that Burundi could be facing imminent catastrophe.

In the speech he was pointedly critical of Nkurunziza - a former Hutu rebel leader before he became Burundi's first democratically elected president after its civil war.

 In the most recent incidents of violence, two people were killed in a shootout in Bujumbura on Monday.

Since April of this year, Burundi has been in political uproar, with hundreds of killings, endangering government authority, and worsening the human rights situations.

Campbell says he blames security forces and allied militia groups.