DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Death toll in weekend fighting in Congolese capital may be 600, opposition party criticises President Kabila's handling of crisis

Record ID: 789141

  • Title: DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Death toll in weekend fighting in Congolese capital may be 600, opposition party criticises President Kabila's handling of crisis
  • Date: 28th March 2007
  • Summary: (W3) KINSHASA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (MARCH 28, 2007) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF WOUNDED PEOPLE IN HOSPITAL
  • Embargoed: 12th April 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAD8M0T3WYS6XJSXMXRPCZI9SSQ
  • Story Text: Hundreds are still in hospital and as many as 600 people may have been killed last week in fighting between the army and a former rebel leader's forces in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
    European Union officials put the death toll at 600. Fighting erupted in Kinshasa last Thursday (March 22) after troops loyal to former presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba refused an order to disarm. The clashes continued for two days before Bemba's forces were routed.
    Bemba remains holed up in the South African embassy, with an arrest warrant for high treason hanging over him, but a top diplomat said he would go to Portugal to receive treatment for a neck injury.
    Pretoria said he had made no formal request for asylum. It was the first fighting in Kinshasa since a presidential election last year aimed at restoring peace to the mineral-rich central African state after a 1998-2003 war.
    President Joseph Kabila won Congo's first democratic poll in more than four decades.
    Last week's violence followed several days of an armed stand-off between Kabila's government and hundreds of Bemba loyalists who defied an order to disarm under a plan to cut his security detail to 12 police officers.
    But opposition figures criticised Kabila's handling of the crisis.
    "President Kabila is a political leader," said Francois Luamba, leader of the opposition party, Movement de Liberation du Congo.
    "The MLR is also an opposition party. We think that this was a pathetic way to solve the problem before fighting started. Before all uncontrollable events, we have to always talk and it is Kabila's role to initiate dialogue," said Luamba.
    European Union ambassadors have issued a joint statement in which they condemned the "premature use of force" and one of the envoys said there had been "disproportionate use of military force".
    Congolese authorities issued a warrant for Bemba's arrest on Friday, blaming him for starting the violence. Kabila said on Monday those behind the unrest would be hunted down and he had nothing to negotiate with the opposition leader.

    aw/os/
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