The authorities in Burundi have dismissed a BBC report accusing the country's security services of running secret torture and detention sites to silence dissent.

Prosecutor general Nyandwi Sylvestre told reporters in the capital, Bujumbura, that investigations carried out by his office found that the blood coming from what the BBC Africa Eye report described as a torture chamber was in fact the blood of goats slaughtered at a nearby house to commemorate the Muslim festival of Eid.

He also said that the house has been guarded by the police and not the security services since November 2015 after an arms cache was discovered there and no human rights abuses were committed in an around it.