Four months after Bujumbura’s key market was razed to the ground, thousands of traders and the economy itself are reeling from the blow.

A rights group says more than 300 members of Burundi’s former rebel group and opposition supporters have been killed by state-backed death squads.

At a side of the Rusizi River in Burundi, not far from a group of hippos, lies the first body, a headless man naked to the waist.

Burundi’s peace deal and democratic ambitions will be put to the test on Monday, with the start of the first phase of an electoral marathon.

Burundi’s acute political deadlock and the collapse of peace talks have raised fears that the nation might fall back into the deadly conflict that devastated the country for more…