Armed attack on home of exiled Rwanda general

Former general Kayumba Nyamasa has survived a third assassination attempt in South Africa, police say.

The former top aide to Rwanda's president has survived two other attempts [AFP]

South African police say there has been another unsuccessful attempt on the life of a former Rwandan army chief of staff who has been living in exile in the country for the past four years.

Paul Ramaloko, spokesman for the special police investigative unit the Hawks, said on Wednesday that there were no injuries in the attack on General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa’s Johannesburg home on Tuesday because no one was there, the Associated Press reported.

A source close to the family told the AFP news agency that the gunmen “overpowered” South African police officers that guard Kayumba’s house in Johannesburg’s Bruma suburb.

“They searched almost every room,” said the source who chose not to be named.

“It can’t be an armed robbery. You don’t ask where ‘are the people?'” when staging a robbery, he said.

Third attempt

This would be the third attempt on Nyamwasa’s life. The former top aide to Rwanda’s president, turned critic, survived two other attempts.

He was shot in the stomach outside his home in June 2010, four months after receiving political asylum in South Africa.

The former army chief said then he believed that the assassination attempt was retribution for his claims that President Paul Kagame had ordered a former president’s air plane shot down, an act that sparked the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

Nyamwasa’s friend and colleague, former Rwandan spymaster Colonel Patrick Karegeya, was assassinated in a plush Johannesburg hotel in December.

Source: News Agencies