Burundi's parliament has passed a law imposing strict controls on international non-governmental organisations after President Pierre Nkurunziza accused such groups of backing an insurrection against him.

A top advisor to Burundi's president and the most public face of the government has escaped an assassination attempt in the capital Bujumbura, officials said Tuesday.

Around 1,000 people marched through the streets of Burundi's capital Saturday to protest against a United Nations Security Council decision to send a police contingent to the violence-wracked country.

A fresh effort to end Burundi's dragging political crisis crashed Wednesday when the government shunned peace talks in Tanzania at the last minute due to the presence of leading opposition and civil society figures.

A quiet protest movement is spreading in Burundi's schools where hundreds of students have been suspended in recent weeks for defacing pictures of President Pierre Nkurunziza in textbooks.

Over 230 teenagers have been suspended from school in Burundi after no one owned up to defacing a picture of the president in the troubled central African country, government officials said Tuesday.

Two civilians in Burundi died Tuesday when a grenade exploded in the hands of soldier apparently about to hurl it into a crowd, killing him too, a local government official said.

Six Burundian high school students charged with insulting President Pierre Nkurunziza were temporarily freed on Tuesday, their families and judicial sources said.

Eleven high school students in a city in central Burundi were detained and charged Friday with defacing a photo of President Pierre Nkurunziza, a police official said, as three people were shot and injured in a protest at the arrests.

An African Union human rights report called on Friday for an international police force and more military and rights observers to be sent to troubled Burundi.

Burundi's government said on yesterday that it would attend regional talks this weekend aimed at ending a year-long cycle of violence that has claimed about 450 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.