northern Burundi; these Hutu militias killed hundreds of Tutsi families in the process. When the army came to quell the uprising, they in turn killed thousands of Hutu, leading to an estimated death toll of between 5,000 and 50,000. A low-level insurgency developed, and the first Hutu rebel groups were formed. Most notable among these were Party for the Liberation of the Hutu PeopleNational Forces of Liberation (Parti pour la libération du peuple HutuForces nationales de libération, PALIPEHUTU-FNL) and National Liberation Front (Front de libération nationale, FROLINA) which had been active from the 1980s. Of the two, PALIPEHUTU-FNL much more powerful than FROLINA, but also suffered from more internal divisions. When a democratic transition began in Burundi in the early 1990s, the historical core leadership of PALIPEHUTU decided to cooperate with the Hutu-dominated Front for Democracy in Burundi (Front pour la démocratie au Burundi, FRODEBU) party and to peacefully participate in politics. Radical members of PALIPEHUTU-FNL disagreed with this decision. In contrast, FROLINA was firmly unified under the command of Joseph Karumba, but always remained a rather weak and marginal group. War 1993 coup and start of the conflict After decades of military dictatorships, the parliamentary and presidential elections of June and July 1993 were the first ones in Burundi to be free and fair. FRODEBU decisively defeated the largely Tutsi Union for National Progress (Union pour le progrès national, UPRONA) of President Buyoya. Thus, FRODEBU leader Melchior Ndadaye became Burundi's first democratically elected Hutu president. His tenure was wrought with problems from the beginning. Though PALIPEHUTU's leadership decided to cooperate with Ndadaye's new government, its military chief commander Kabora Kossan refused to end the insurgency. He and his followers split from PALIPEHUTU-FNL, and from then on simply called themselves "National Forces of Liberation" (FNL). For Kossan and his men the only option was to continue to fight until all Tutsi in Burundi were dead, removed or fully disempowered. Nevertheless, Ndadaye's government was more threatened by Tutsi extremists than by radical Hutu groups: The latter were still rather weak, whereas the former controlled much of Burundi's military. The political situation escalated when Tutsi extremist army officers launched a coup on 21 October. Supported by about half of the armed forces, the putschists murdered Ndadaye alongside other leading FRODEBU members, and declared a new regime. However, the military government was destabilized from the beginning, as it faced internal chaos and opposition